


The Unrest

by hooksandheroics



Series: The Unrest [1]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Espionage, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Magic AU, Non-Graphic Violence, Rebellion, Torture, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-05-26 01:24:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14989694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hooksandheroics/pseuds/hooksandheroics
Summary: A kingdom is desperate for answers to a tragedy that is threatening to resurface after decades of laying dormant. What a princess and her guard discover just might change the course of nature.





	1. lay where you're laying (don't make a sound)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladyfriday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyfriday/gifts).



> yall
> 
> i wasn't ready for this to be a 10k worded fic. i was just writing about this one scene in my head, and then it grew legs and attacked me, and now i'm writing a series of one-shots around this plot that tara (ladyfriday on ao3) and i are cooking up in our dms. 
> 
> ok word of advice, everything is still murky in this installment. but, gratuitous shirtless!scott, jealous!scott, and childish!scott in this. also, badass!tessa. but when has she stopped being a badass tbh. (also, sexual tension because i know what i'm about). the plot and everything will become clear as i write more from this universe. i hope you take this journey with me.
> 
> here are my acknowledgements: first and foremost and probably the most important is to recognize that without tara, my bitch, my friend, my enemy, my chill pill, this would not have gone the way it had. i don't think it would have been written at all, if i'm being honest. we had a rule, tara and i, that we constantly break. and this is the result of that rule breakage. also, she's the most kickass proofreader and cheerleader and i'm glad she adopted me. this is our baby. i love you bih. ew sap.
> 
> secondly, happy birthday to ate Li. this is also for you.

She counts in her head.

_ One _ , there’s a loud bang just to the side of the shack. It’s dark but she can’t chance lighting up a candle. The shack is small, it reeks of aged hay and horse dung. She will burn with this little shack before they get to her –

_ Two, _ she remembers what her maidens would say. Keep to yourself, keep your head down, the Unrest does not schedule its arrival. She has done all of those things, walked a silent reverie all through town, quiet soles underneath her feet. Still, the scrape of diamonds is loud and clear and rings through muddy streets. She did not start the riot, no –

_ Three _ , he comes for her. She hears him before she sees him, his voice piercing through the protests and the pain on the side of her head. (She belatedly realizes that her head is still throbbing, oozing thick blood. It’s not deep, a head wound just bleeds more.) He grabs her arm, eyes frantic and darting, up the street, down an alleyway. He pushed her down in between two huge columns, hazel eyes dark and deep. She has never seen him this… dangerous before. Her heart squeezes in her chest when he puts both of his bloodied hands on her cheeks. He tells her to stay put.

“I’ll come back for you,” he says. She believes, she really does. But he turns and runs towards a dark corner, leaving her alone and cold and shivering. He tells her to stay put.

_ Four _ , she does not. And now she’s here.

_ Five. _

The back of the shack has a tiny hole, a crack through the wood large enough for her to squeeze through. She hears bottles breaking and shouting from the pub to her left, but she can’t let fear hold her heart. 

She has to hide. She knows who she is, she’s not an idiot. Her clothes boast the reds and golds of the kingdom insignia down to the comb in her hair, the robes that her family proudly wear are spun with precious metal and gems, her name invoke silence when spoken. She sees how the village people look at her – distaste, disgust, fear. 

Her father is the Queen’s most trusted adviser, has ordered so many executions on behalf of the First Family, her brothers are knights, and she… she is engaged to the crown prince. She’s not an idiot, she knows who she is. 

Tessa Virtue rips the fabric off her sleeve and bunches it up her temple. Her eyelashes stick together with blood, with mud, with rainwater, but she drags on towards the side of the alley from where she came. 

Lightning snaps through the sky, thunder rips through the clouds – she closes her eyes briefly. In her mind, she sees his eyes, feels his hard breath hitting her face. He looked like he had rushed from the palace on foot. He looked red and soaked and angry with her, she can’t possibly wait for the dressing down she will inevitably get when she gets home.

She peers through the corner, the rain stinging her eyes. The shops and homes surrounding the pub have dimmed their lights, closed their windows. It’s now quiet aside from the raging storm and the few rebels collecting their friends –

The rebel insignia gleams on one of the men’s jackets, blood red and small, just on the chest. If anything, it seems like a tiny dot on an otherwise inconspicuous article of clothing. The rebel faction to this side of the kingdom is strong and even-footed, at least as Tessa has heard. They call themselves  _ Gadbois _ , their leaders are shrouded in shadows, and they operate underground. The townspeople only ever dare to speak of them in whispers, fear not in their own danger but the danger it may pose to the rebellion. It speaks a lot of what these rebels have done for the town, something Tessa would like to know more about.

What she does know is that this part of the kingdom is mostly farmers and millers, builders and blacksmiths, mostly peasants. Ever since the King and Queen decided to make a deal with the neighboring kingdom, the threat of the Unrest became palpable. 

What she does know is that the deal involved swallowing the lands of the peasant farmers into the border, expanding the neighboring kingdom, in exchange for their military support. The military support also coming from this kingdom. Young boys from Ilderton are drafted, shipped, and trained in the land next door. They come back as men ready to fight the wars this kingdom will continue to wage until there’s nothing and no one left.

What Tessa does know is that it had felt more like letting Canton take over this entire kingdom, like selling themselves.

What she does know is that this made Gadbois into who they are now. 

What she does know is that nobody knows who Gadbois are, nobody knows where they gather, and…

They never show themselves unplanned. Until… tonight. Or maybe this was planned, she really has no way of knowing. 

Three more left on the street, none of them paying attention to the side of the sidewalk where she’s standing. The only thing throbbing in her mind is to get to the barn, get to it fast. Getting back to the palace right this moment is impossible, but she has the barn.

On the other side of this town is a quiet clearing that used to be a farm. The previous Unrest became too much for the family that once owned that place, they immigrated, and now their barn sits unused. This is where he brought her that first night.

The light that illuminates the muddy path towards the barn comes from the church to the far side of the river, the serene orange light casting a sort of warmth all over the inside, it gives her the feeling of being in a confessional. When Scott first brought her here, it was after he caught her sneaking off the palace grounds.

Two nights after her engagement, three riots broke out in different parts of the kingdom. That same night, she became shackled to a personal bodyguard, a guard dog – the youngest of the Moir clan. He wore a dark suit, eyes darkly hazel and analytical. He looked strong, able. He looked dead in the eyes. 

He didn’t meet anyone’s gaze as the King and her father introduced her to him, just looked straight ahead – until she told them he didn’t need a personal guard. Then,  _ then _ his eyes moved the slightest to pierce through hers. 

She had raised her chin just a little bit, defiance and strength in her gaze. If he so much as protested, she would  _ show _ him. 

The King was speaking, and so was her father, but she wasn’t listening. Instead, she was counting in her head.

_ One _ , he may look bored and apathetic but she saw him counting the palace guards around him, cataloguing the weapons in their person. He could blend in a crowd easily, Tessa could just tell. 

_ Two _ , she knew his brothers. Had traversed lands with them before, the boisterous duo, as they rode strong horses beside her carriage while they talked about the life in their estate, but she had never heard of him. She had never heard of a Scott Moir, had never seen him in records before.

_ Three _ , he had two blades – one under his left bicep, the other strapped inside his left thigh. He also knew that she knew.

She held his eyes and – he smirked. It was small, went unnoticed except that she did notice, and he stayed smirking at her until her reluctant acquiescence. (She understood the threats surrounding her engagement, and the threats of an unpredictable Unrest looming just around the corner. She understood the need.)

Amusement danced in his eyes and her heart skipped a few beats, but she has had years of practice keeping her face neutral. 

He had followed her to her room, gave her a silent nod as she disappeared into the dimness. There was no question about the whereabouts of her fiancé, nor about their separate rooms. Just a return of his infuriating smirk and a deliberate move to stand beside her door.

Her sneaking out of the palace in the dead of night might have been a kind of rebellion against being tied to a stranger, however capable of protecting her. It did not last long, however.

The stranger had caught up to her before she got to where she needed to be, dragged her by the arm and into a clearing in the poorest part of the kingdom. She was kicking and screaming at first – this was a stranger after all. But he pinned her to the side of the barn, her back making contact with the old splintered wood of the abandoned establishment, shadows swallowing them whole –

He had leaned closer, put his hand over her mouth, and said, “The bandit group makes their trip back to the caves during this hour. If you so much as make a sound, they will see us and recognize you. They will kill you. And then me.”

The forest to their right had rustled with hushed voices but she still ripped his hand away from her mouth. She tried her best at a cold tone despite the harsh beating of her heart. “How do you know that? Nobody knows that,” she whispered.

He smirked. God, she had wanted to slap that smirk off his face. “Well, I guess I’m nobody.”

*

(She had burned where he had touched her. To her lips, her cheeks, her stomach and thighs where he pressed his weight to keep her where she was. And she wanted to know why, but the question got stuck in her throat every time.)

*

Her pristine red riding dress is now ruined by mud and rainwater and blood, her boots squelch ugly on the trail, her toes possibly pruned, but she keeps walking.

_ If the Unrest catches up to you, _ Scott had said,  _ go here. I’ll come and get you. _

And so she’s here. But she’s not alone.

The rain has calmed into a drizzle, the lightnings moving onto the next field, but the river near the clearing still babbles noisily by. Still, she hears the rustling inside, feet shuffling on the dried grass. She hears quiet swearing, a muted thud, and an exhalation –

Shit.

Someone’s in there.

From where she stands, Tessa has two choices. One is to run back home, risk the rebels finding her unarmed and unguarded. She thinks if she runs fast enough, she can reach home. Still, she doesn’t know where Scott is. He could be back in the alleyway looking for her.

Two is to open the barn door, use the element of surprise while she’s got it, make sure this little secret hideout is uncompromised –

She goes with the second option. (Her mind is not making much sense at the moment, and it could be the blood she’s losing.)

The inside of the barn is not that spacious. You stand at the threshold and you see every corner, so it’s easy to spot the trail of blood leading to the figure leaning against the empty wooden barrel by the back corner. Her heart still beats with the rush of an anticipated fight even as she finds that there is nothing to be worried about. And then it comes back full force – the panic –

_ She knows that jacket _ .

Before she can even consider it, her feet are taking her to the bloodied figure, dried hay crunching under her soles the only sound aside from labored breathing. “Scott,” she calls, and over her pounding heart, she recalls his instructions. 

_ In any situation, be calm. Be present. Be patient. _

He’s leaning precariously, would fall over if she hadn’t reached him in time. He’s a mess, hair caked with mud, like he’d been dragged on the ground, head wound bleeding profusely. His clothes are soaked through, he’s shivering, but bless him, he’s trying his best to open his eyes and meet hers. If hers are wet with unshed tears, she hopefully would forget about it.

“Tessa?”

She has never felt such relief in hearing her name. 

“Yes, it’s me,” she replies. “You’re hurt.”

“I’m fine.”

Scott tries to sit up straighter, but he lets out a pained yelp. He  _ is _ hurt, and badly. And she knows he told her to be calm but she doesn’t know anything about mending people. She knows politics, she knows espionage, she knows how to ride faster than any of her knights, but she doesn’t know a thing about broken bones. She should have –

“Hey,” he rasps, arm raising halfway but falling without touching her. He’s so tired. “This is not your fault.”

She wipes her eyes with her arm and –

“You’re bleeding,” he notes, and this time his palm cradles her cheek. She notices the shaking of his hand and she wants to stop it, to warm him up, but she’s shaking herself so she holds onto his hand and keeps it there.

“I’m fine.”

He scoffs. He must have wanted to say something but he doubles over to the side and coughs, heaves something wet in his chest. The ground near him colors red with his blood, and she wants to throw up, but she steels herself.

If they wait here any longer, he might die. She doesn’t really know, but she wouldn’t let her guard dog die on her watch. She takes his arm – he winces, a possible broken rib – and hoists him up to his feet.

He is so  _ damn _ heavy but she can’t – she can’t leave him like this. He might die and – she – he can’t –

He gurgles a bit, something she cannot understand, concussion probably taking effect as she jostles him to steady him. “I was – I was trying to light a signal…” he points to the corner where a stick lies, slick with blood. “If you can light that up, my people will come get us. You just… if they come and I’m passed out –”

He reaches into his jacket and pins a red badge onto her collar. She looks into his eyes, bloodshot and tired, and she wants to say something but can only think of parting words, words said to the dying, so she keeps her mouth shut. He still smiles and for a moment, she thought everything would be fine, and then his eyes roll to the back of his head and his weight collapses into her.

The signal flies into the sky immediately the moment she lights it up by the high window.

She sits quietly, fingers at the pulse on his wrist. She just needs him alive, she can’t leave. He has never let her down, she can’t leave him now. Even when they can shoot her on sight. Even when they probably will.

The badge sits heavy on her chest, her heart thudding painfully under her ribs. The  _ Gadbois _ insignia. 

*

When Tessa was seven years old, her father became one of the Royal Court’s high advisers. She quickly discovered that the columns of the palace are made from low grade marble, that the knights wear second – third – fourth hand chain mail crumbling with rust, and that the tea cups are  _ never _ brought out unless there’s a foreign diplomat to have tea with the Royal Family. 

She vowed to get out of that place as soon as she can.

A year ago, she got engaged to the crown prince.

Approximately two days after, she received death threats. 

And now, she’s waking up in an unfamiliar house in an unfamiliar place far away from home. She must have passed out either before, during, or after his  _ people _ came to get them. They did not shoot her on sight, but they did rip the badge out of her collar. Her fingers skim her chest, but find none of the familiar clothes that she was wearing the night before.

She keeps her eyes closed, listening to the quiet rustling of busy feet around her while trying to keep her breathing even. 

_ “Make sure that’s covered – no, that’s not going to work. Put that by the Royal, she’ll need that – _

That could be her. And she’s not dead.

She got taken in by a rebel faction set to kill the Royal Family and she’s  _ not  _ dead. When she opens her eyes, it’s to a little blonde girl’s retreating back, disappearing between the heavy canvas curtains around her small cot. Her pillow feels like it’s made of bricks, the blanket over her feet is scratchy and threadbare, and the cot creaks ominously when she sits up to reach for the glass of water at her bedside table.

She notices her clothes sitting by the end of the cot, and that she’s in light clothes that can be considered underthings to the more conservative side of the Royal Court – 

“Don’t worry, we had Marie change you into those.”

A young man smiles at her from the space where the child from before had disappeared. He has jovial lines around his eyes, short dark hair, and soft features, even with bruises around his jaw and his cheekbones. He must be one of the rebels during the riot. He looks kindly at her, no malice, no ill wishes. But she’s had a lifetime of being told not to trust anyone outside the Royal Court. (And almost as long of a lifetime being told not to trust anyone  _ inside _ the Royal Court.) She does not return his smile.

“And that’s not poisoned,” he adds, pointing to the glass of water in her hand. There’s a pause in his movements before offering her the bowl in his, steam coming off of it. Her mouth waters at the prospect of warm food, but still –

The man sits next to her, barely restrained enthusiasm emanating in waves. “My name is Patrick, but most people here call me Chiddy.”

She answers with reluctant silence which Patrick seems to pick up. 

“You lit the signal, yeah?” he asks.

She nods.

“And Scott pinned the badge on you,” he states.

“I guess he did.”

He smiles even wider, a smidge of conspiracy. “Take this, it’s good.” He pushes the bowl into her hands and takes the glass, setting it down by the ground next to him. 

And then –

“Did you just… you said  _ Marie _ changed me into this?” she asks, her heart pounding. “Marie-France Dubreuil?” Head of the Infirmary, married to Patrice Lauzon, Master of Utilities, has a daughter who walks with her every Tuesday afternoon by the gardens as her parents look on from their work at the fields.

Marie-France who brushes her hair and tells her to always be careful.

Patrick laughs. “Oh, you’d be surprised how many we have inside the palace, princess.”

She nods to herself. This means that…

“Where’s Scott?”

Patrick raises his eyebrows. “He’s in one near the window.”

She gets up, leaves the bowl by the table, unsurprised that Patrick follows her out of the curtains and into –

The house is more of a huge mess hall, but instead of tables and chairs, it’s a maze of a hundred or so curtained beds and patients with various injuries, nurses and healers flitting around like bees in a field of flowers. The walls are old but sturdy, the beams bare and strong. The high ceilings sport red runners with the Gadbois mark.

The house buzzes with the muted bustle of the morning, dew settling into the air making it chilly and damp. A nurse carries an infant in his arms and into a curtained bed.

_ This is the rebellion _ .

Patrick stands beside her frozen frame, arms folded across his chest. Tessa notices the gauze peeking out of his collar and the red angry patch of burnt skin around his neck. 

She exhales. “Why am I still alive?” she turns to Patrick and sees the steel behind his kind brown eyes. 

“You must know who Scott is by now,” he says instead, and she nods. “You saved him. If you had gotten there a minute later, he would have been gone. If I were asked, I would say he was fighting to stay alive for you.”

“I did what I had to do,” she replies, hiding the shudder she gets from the thought of finding his unmoving lifeless body in the barn.

“Yes,” Patrick nods. “And he risked a lot by putting that badge on you. You must be worth something.”

*

She has never sported as many bruises this past year as the years of her life before that, Tessa realizes as she catches her reflection in the basin of water in front of her. 

The palace does not allow for young women to engage in combat training, especially not of her stature. She was expected to be proper and quiet, subdued, obedient. She should not be keeping a sword under her bed, should not be keeping a blade under her pillow, should not be riding as fast as she is. She should not be parading around the halls in her underthings, should not be cussing.

She  _ should _ marry into the Royal Court to establish her worth. She  _ should _ persuade the Queen into appointing Duke Virtue, her father, as the Head Adviser.

She should find a contact in the rebellion, arrange the assassination of the Queen before she arranges  _ hers _ . She  _ should _ not pay attention to the guard dog they shackled her with. Not even a little bit.

She’s had her fair share of guard dogs before, men who think she’s as obedient, as subdued as they come. And she can play the part well, is the thing. It’s easy to make all of them believe that the giggling little young woman is as what she presents herself to be. Her nails are trimmed and her palms are smooth –

Not since a year ago, though.

The Moir boy catches her sneaking out the first time, a feat none of her previous guard dogs has ever done. 

The moment he dragged her into the darkened interior of the abandoned barn, she turned on him and poked his chest with a pointed finger, not caring if it hurt. She was tired and her meeting with a potential lead had just gone sour. “Were you following me?” she had seethed.

She had been working to get this contact for months now, and she had just been foiled by her own guard dog.

His teeth glinted in the dark. “It’s my job, princess. Lest I let you be killed and get myself hanged. The duke does like that method best.”

It was supremely dark, but his eyes shine in church lights and she be damned if she let him defeat her own defiance. 

He scoffed. “Why are you sneaking off into the night, your Highness? The Unrest doesn’t pick a time.”

“None of your business.”

“Your safety is my business, so I’d say, yes, it is my business as well whatever it is that you do at night.”

“I can defend myself, thank you.”

His smile turned leery. “Is it a man? A woman?”

She gasped. “No!” she pushed at his chest until he got out of her personal space. “Back off –

He had grabbed the hand that she planted on his chest, turned her around with her own arm wrapped around her torso, pinned her to his chest with the force of his grip and Lord above, he was  _ strong _ and quick. She couldn’t get out of his hold – her heart was beating so fast against her chest, her palms were wet with perspiration – her mind chanted incoherent words, words she couldn’t hear with the pounding in her ears –

“This is how you defend yourself?” his quiet words brushed against the skin of her neck, sending shivers down her spine that he most certainly felt. Her fear morphed into shame into anger into her nails digging into the skin of his forearm. He didn’t let go.

“You caught me – off guard,” she choked out, pathetically. 

He spun her around, hand still clasped tightly around hers, and then pulled her close again. He breathed hard into her cheeks. “The Unrest will not wait for you to get ready.”

And Tessa, she wanted to lash out, prove to him that she was ready, but he was so close.

She had never been this close to a man before, had never looked into the eyes of one with so much hazel in them that they shine in the night. She had never felt the hardness of a man’s chest against her own. 

Scott was… hard. All over. Not in  _ that  _ way. Just –

He was looking into her eyes, too, dark and deep. There was something there that Tessa couldn’t pinpoint, something fleeting, gone as quick as it had come. He kept looking at her eyes and then at her mouth, and while his breath was even, his heart pounded against her chest. 

He abruptly stepped away from her, cleared his throat and kicked the hay with his feet as his hands went to his hips, before meeting her eyes again. “You’re stubborn,” he noted, and she sniffed. “I just know that this is not your first, and far be it from your last. So here’s your compromise –

“I wasn’t asking for one.”

“Well, you’re going to get one whether you like it or not.” He held her stare for a long minute. “I will teach you how to fight. Only on nights that I say we can. This is where we will meet, exactly at the ninth bell. You will learn how to defend yourself, and you will let me go with you everywhere –

“No –

“You will die the next moment you step out of the palace like this,” he said, and his tone did not invite bargain.

And Tessa, she is and has always been rational. She thought of her every move, made sure all sides were covered, if not in battle, then in every other aspect of her life. When she looked into Scott’s eyes, they beckoned for her to take a leap of faith. 

Hence the bruises around her thighs and legs every night they worked on her footwork. Hence the bruises around her arms whenever they worked on hand-to-hand. The cuts in her palms are constant, the scrapes against her knees, as well. 

Her biceps sport bruises the shape of his fingertips, bruises she would look at the mirror in the mornings, trace with her own fingers, and then hide under sleeves for the rest of the day – and these are all physical.

And then there are nights when their sweat would mingle as she pins him to the ground. He would smile up at her, and pride would swell in her chest as his heaves in exhaustion underneath her. There are nights when he’d grab her thigh a little bit tighter, make her gasp audibly. He would apologize, but his eyes would stay dark. 

These are all – well, physical. 

The heat under her skin is physical. So is the daze in his eyes, the shortness of both of their breaths. These are all physical.

Him lying prone on this small cot with dark blue and green splotches on the skin around his ribs, angry red cuts down his chest, on his forehead, around his arms, his hands clutching the sheets under him as if he is trapped in a dream, and the prayers in her head that she has only used a handful of times – this is something deeper. 

She watches him wake slowly, watches his eyelids flutter until the pull of waking becomes too insistent. She realizes idly that she has never seen him so vulnerable before. Guard dogs always stay alert, she hears in her head. This is what her father had told her. Your guard dog is only from the best roster, he is trained to kill. His life is yours and will risk it at your command. 

_ This is your life _ , the Duke had told her. And if anyone asked her, she would gladly say that there is no love lost between her and her father. 

She finds his bleary eyes dead focused on her and her stomach gives a little jolt. For a quiet moment, she spends it just looking at him, marvels at his assessment of her appearance, and follows the movement of his eyes. He breaks the silence.

“You okay?”

And she has to smile. He was the one who got dragged through mud, got beaten up. And he asks her that.

“I got this,” she points to her forehead. “But otherwise, I think I’m fine.”

He nods minutely, a wince in his features as he tries to sit up. She lets him, well, fall back into bed. He really is not fit yet to even move and she would wager that he knows this well enough, too.

She holds up the wet towel in her hand and he resigns.

Tessa has never done this before – clean wounds. Certainly not the wounds of her guard dog. But he doesn’t seem to be protesting the stilted motions of her hands as they pass over the bruises on his torso. His muscles twitch as the warm towel wipes at the cuts, his chest rises up when she carefully circles around the worst of them. 

It’s fascinating, is what it is. His skin is pale and smooth where there are no scars (and he has a  _ myriad _ of them littered around his arms and his chest and his abdomen – there’s one that runs down his side, and it looks deep, does it still pain him?), his muscles are defined and strong, and she finds herself wanting to touch them, to touch  _ him _ . 

She moves on to his face, the smart thing to do before she embarrasses herself. 

But the moment she lifts the towel to his cheek, he stalls her with a hand around her wrist. Her eyes meet his and for a short while, the world slows down around them. Her breath feels labored in her lungs, and her skin tingles where it meets his.

He doesn’t explain for a few long seconds. And then he exhales, and says, “Thank you. For saving me.”

He pulls at her hand gently, laying it against his bruised chest to where his heart beats, steady,  _ steady _ . 

Still, the question shakes the back of her mind like a caged animal, the one niggling ever since he turned down the dark alley and –

“Why did you leave me?” she asks, and she didn’t mean for it to sound desperate, to sound as petulant, but her voice cracks at the volume she’s trying to achieve. 

Scott takes a deep breath and his expression turns dark. “I needed to make the kill, their leader, I needed to make sure you walk away safely before they get to you and I can’t – ” he sniffs and looks away. “If I dragged you to the safe house while the riot was going on, you would  _ not _ have stayed away from the fight. And that will put a target on your back. A royal gallivanting at night, they will follow you and learn your every move. Even  _ I _ cannot protect you from them –

“Them?” Tessa asks.

“The  _ others _ ,” he replies. “The other factions. They will not hesitate to kill you.”

Tessa scoffs to hide the surprise of this knowledge, tries to pull her hand away, but he tightens his grip, not letting her go far. “Isn’t that  _ your _ plan, too? Kill the royals. Why haven’t you killed me yet?”

He looks like he wants to, right at that moment. She’s challenging him, taunting him, and damn it all, she wants to kiss him. She has never felt this urge pull this hard at her. 

And there’s still murder in his eyes when he says, “You’re different.”

“Different?”

He huffs. “I was supposed to. That first night. I was supposed to drive a knife into your heart but –“ he laughs, small and quiet – “you were gone from your room.” His grip around her wrist relaxes but she finds that she doesn’t want to move, not when his thumb begins making small circles on her skin, absentmindedly.

“There were rumors of a highborn mingling with the bad side of the kingdom, and I thought it was just some horny little prince with too much time in his hands, but when I found you there, I just  _ knew _ .”

He looks through the window next to his bed, thumb still making her skin tingle. “I could have,” he says quietly. The hour of waking is upon them and they’re not the only ones awake now. Tessa hears the neighboring bed comfort an infant’s disturbed slumber. “In that barn. I’m glad I didn’t.”

She looks at him,  _ really _ looks at him and when he looks back to her, she feels warm all over. It has nothing to do with the breeze, nothing to do with the sunlight escaping through the jalousies of the window, it has everything to do with her hand on his chest and how his heart seems to beat a little faster under her palm.

(She shakes the feeling that the realization of skin meeting skin has given her. It is simply just because his wounds need to breathe that he is without a shirt.)

“You couldn’t,” she says.

He raises a brow. “I could.”

She frowns. “Even then, I outsmarted you.”

He laughs, bright and lovely. “That is a lie!” he exclaims, and she shakes her head and leans over, and it happens, she leans in close – closer than necessary – to wipe at his nose, at his cheeks, at his forehead, and his gaze drops to her mouth. His smile disappears, replaced with something dark and heavy.

And if she weren’t looking closely, she would have missed it. But she was. She still is, and her hand pauses just shy of his ear.

“Tessa,” he murmurs, and their foreheads touch. His eyelids flutter against her cheeks until they close, his breath washing over her lips. “I need…”

Her heart pounds painfully. “What do you need?”

He takes a deep breath, pauses. “I need…” the words float in the space between them, landing softly in the air like leaves in the fall. Her fingers are in his hair, his hand is on her cheek –

_ “I talked to the South and – oh.” _

A muted thud, something lands on the floor, and they break apart. Patrick looks stricken, frozen, the blankets he must be holding a second ago now on the floor by his feet. His eyes switch from Tessa to Scott, making silent calculations in his head, probably.

Tessa sits up straighter, leans far away, and Scott, bless him, sits up with minimal wincing. “The South? You mean Sam?”

“Uh,” Patrick blinks and bends to retrieve the blankets. “Yes, they sent, uh, a letter explaining the…” his gaze shifts to Tessa and then back to Scott. “Uh, thing. That we should discuss in private. When you’re done with – Tessa. I mean, talking with the princess. I have to – blankets, you must be cold.”

He leaves the blankets on his mattress, shooting Scott a look that must have been shared so many times before between the two of them. She watches as they exchange silent words with their eyes, fascinated at the eyebrow movements, most of all.

“Oh and, princess,” Patrick chirps, turning a smile to her, “you promised to help with my burns.”

Tessa returns his smile and nods. Patrick gives a sloppy salute at the both of them before exiting through the curtains.

She turns to arrange the blankets around Scott’s legs but pauses when she notices the look on his face. She can’t explain it, he just… looks at her like he cannot believe – something.

“What?”

“Helping Patrick? With his burns?” he asks, still looking constipated.

“Yes,” she replies incredulously. “He was burnt badly last night.”

He furrows his brows. “When did this happen?”

“The riot?”

“No – the whole little… deal. That you’re going to help him redress his burns?”

She blinks. “Just this morning, he came to see me and give me some food. I wanted to repay his kindness.”

He looks pale and still angry. Tessa couldn’t figure out why and it is starting to annoy her. 

And Scott may be the best guard dog and fighter of his generation but he can still be such a  _ child _ sometimes, and most times, Tessa finds it endearing. This time, it’s just… and now he’s mumbling under his breath as he sips from his cup.

“Use your words, Scott,” she tells him and he frowns. She can’t understand – one moment, they were sharing something fraught with tension, and the next, he’s being a proper prick.

“I said you should go to him and  _ help _ him,” he says. “You can leave me.”

If that’s what you want, she thinks. Tessa wants to stay a little bit longer, ask him what he really  _ needs _ , maybe help him with his wounds, too, but he’s telling her to go and she’s nothing but a proper lady who obeys.

He calls her back as she stands, but she’s not going to give him the time of day if he’s being an imbecile. The Lord above knows just how many times they had had this kind of conversation and it usually ends with her walking out of the barn and him following her until he knocks some sense into his brain. Usually halfway through the way home, holding onto her elbow so that she’ll slow down and listen. He can’t do that now, she marvels at the thought. He’s still too weak and dizzy for that, and so she finds her way through the maze of beds.

*

“And you just… wear the crown?”

“Yes.”

Tessa doesn’t know what’s so fascinating about the crown, especially to Patrick. Her crown is small, made of heavy gold that sits on her head for the longest hours of her life during the day. She would rather it be melted and made into some sword that she could use to slit the Queen’s throat. But as it is, she is resigned to glaring imaginary daggers into the Queen’s side profile at breakfast and dinnertime. For now.

She is lathering the ointment that one of the older healers gave her in a wooden bowl onto Patrick’s back where the splotches are angrier as they sit on his bed, curtains open. (She hadn’t missed the cautious manner in which she was spoken to, and not just by the old healer, but by everyone she’s interacted since she woke up. Save for Patrick.)

The riot last night must have used some kind of acid, she muses, because these are not simply caused by fire. The skin has turned an alarming shade of dark purple and black in the middle of the areas where the acid must have landed severely. 

“I have never seen so much gold,” Patrick says, breaking the silence. He must still be talking about the crown. 

“The Queen has a bigger crown,” she says, carefully applying a huge dollop on the one just under his shoulder blade.

“Yes,” Patrick notes with a sharp gasp when he feels the ointment on his skin, which then turns into a good-natured chuckle. “But  _ she _ is not here. This is the closest I have ever gotten with a royal. And she’s healing me!”

Tessa laughs. “Oh please, I am just doing what the elder told me to do.”

“Yes, and you are doing an exceptional job,” he replies. “The Lord above knows how heavy Zach’s hands are, that little untrained child. He does more harm to me than good.”

She really does like Patrick – the only kind eyes in this house full of wary stares. The soldiers ignore her, the healers and nurses only accept her help with side eyes and whispers. The children are only slightly better, regarding her with careful, awed eyes, hiding behind curtains and blankets. 

Tessa understands the veiled hostility of the locals. She knows what she is to them: a symbol of all the riches this kingdom has to offer, the  _ economic progress  _ it boasts, while the poor become poorer, the dying become dead. Her crown is made from minerals mined by men who work for hours and hours a day and get a loaf of bread a week as payment, her clothes spun by women and children who get what the others get – illnesses with no proper treatment, unclean water.

The illusion of royalty is only for children borne of the high society. Children born elsewhere, born where the golden light glinting from the towers of the palace does not reach, only know royalty as caricatures of the wealth that they will never have. 

She loathes it. She loathes it and understands that this is where her privilege has brought her. That  _ understanding _ and the desire to change it are the only things she can offer the people who are suffering because of her. 

She holds on to her question a little while longer, until she couldn’t. “Patrick?”

“Your Highness?”

She inhales. “Why are you being kind to me?”

She watches the back of his head tilt to the side, and then he faces her, blinking but not of ignorance. He is measuring her and the words he is going to say, she just feels it. 

Finally, he gives her a small smile. “Scott and I grew up together,” he says, playing with the fraying ends of his blanket. “My family died in the first Unrest when I was five and the Moir clan adopted me. His brothers were good to me, still are, but Scott… he made sure I was fine. That I will never want for anything again. He gave me his toys and held my hand when the storms would grow louder. He taught me how to read and write because their tutor refused to teach me. I owe him my life.”

He is silent for a while, seemingly lost in memories. When he looks at her again, there is steel behind his gaze. “He is my brother in everything but blood. And I know him like the back of my hand, as he knows me like the back of his, I suppose. And never in the history of his life has he ever swayed from his goal, given in order or not. Not until you, your Highness. He kept your life. Has risked his own for yours.

“The rebellion cannot be kept a secret to you anymore which is why I’m telling you this: he is facing trial with the council for bringing a royal into Gadbois grounds. For pinning the badge onto you. He will face punishment, should the council find his actions unjustifiable. I don’t fully know his gameplay and what role you play in it, but I trust him. And if he trusts you, I will, too.”

Tessa looks away and her eyes land on the familiar bed just across the room. She sees the curtains draw back close, just  _ that _ , and her heart leaps. She doesn’t know what to make of all of it. She wants to ask him why, she wants to know the reason, but she finds herself frozen just for a moment, trying to process what Patrick had just revealed.

She tries to count in her mind:

_ One _ , Gadbois has a council. There are leaders in shadows that run the rebellion. There are people with power aside from those who lead the riots and the protests, and they impose the laws. Scott had just broken one and is facing trial. Because of her.

_ Two _ , Marie-France and Patrice are Gadbois, and who knows who else. The palace must be crawling with moles and she thinks of Greek stories, of monstrous wooden horses and how easily the people had accepted it along with their demise.

_ Three _ , Gadbois is not as small an anomaly, not like all the generals initially thought.  _ Something about the South _ , she thinks, and she can imagine safe houses in all the corners of the kingdom. She can imagine millers and bakers and farmers, armed against the Court, against the army. 

_ Four _ , the Royal Court does not fully know what they are up against. 

*

Scott sees her sitting on the chair to his bedside and watching his back as he wakes and immediately covers his head with his blanket, turning further away from her.  _ Like a child _ , Tessa thinks, and only a bit fondly. 

“I’m sure you have other people to take care of, your Highness,” he says, muffled under thick fabric. She does not miss the petulance in his tone.

Tessa rolls her eyes. “If you are talking about Chiddy, he’s done for the day.”

His head reemerges from the blanket, his lower lip jutted out in a pout. “ _ Chiddy _ ? He let you call him  _ Chiddy _ ?”

She shrugs. “What can I say, he and I are close now.”

Scott sits up and turns his whole body towards her. She notes rather belatedly that he is still without a shirt, and that his hair is disheveled from the pillows. She wants to run her hands through it, to tame it or to make it even worse, she does not know. She quells the urge.

He is still pouting,  _ that _ she finds funny. He notices.

“What’s funny?”

She shakes her head and offers him what she brought for him, his lunch. A couple slices of bread and some soup from the mess hall. Chiddy had led her through the house and into a larger hall where the smell of warm food and the sound of boisterous chatter greeted her with dead silence the moment she stepped into the room.

She had looked at Chiddy, letting some of the fear seep into her eyes. Chiddy had just regarded her with a warm smile and offered his arm; she took it and they walked towards the kitchen where he introduced her to the cooks and chefs and helps. Chiddy seemed well-acquainted with everybody, and it gave her comfort.

“Between Scott and me, I am better liked,” he whispered to her in front of the stout head chef, Carson. Both he and the chef were laughing, making the conversation light, and she had felt the weight in her chest lessen a fraction.

She doesn’t tell Scott about this, but she does recount the kind chef stuffing an extra loaf for him with a warm wish of a full and fast recovery. He regards her with soft eyes, softer than he’s ever given her before, and her cheeks color a faint pink under the setting sun. His mouth is still full of bread, but he swallows and crosses his legs under the covers, a gesture that means they are talking.

The sun is setting fast and the nurses and healers are clamoring to light the lamps lined around the hall’s walls, creating some warmth and the illusion of fireflies and summertime, even when the breeze makes it clear that it’s nearly winter. One is beside the window near Scott’s, and the elder healer from before approaches to light it.

She sends Scott a wrinkly smile, pats his cheek with an affection only borne from somewhere deep. She gives Tessa a somber nod and exits without a word.

Scott’s smile stays as he watches the elder healer go. “She is a dear healer to my family. The Lord knows how rowdy we were as boys, she saved us all, countless of times. And now she’s saving real lives.”

“You are facing trial,” Tessa says like there is no other way around it but through it. His smile drops, he focuses on his soup bowl and frowns. “Because of me.”

His eyes lift to her face. “My job is to protect you.”

Tessa feels like her ribs are being squeezed so tightly. His voice is so serious, like somewhere in him, he believes she is above his rebellion. She wants to scream at him for muddying her purpose, for trying to make her believe that her life is worth more than all the others in this house, and she wants to punch him in the face for looking at her like that.

But most of all, she fears. There is something in the far horizon of their partnership that is bright and scary and gripping, something she doesn’t have a name for. But that’s not what gives her fear. It is that whatever it is, it will drive them apart. And right now, she needs him more than ever. 

“And your rebellion?” she asks, hates how weak her voice sounds in her ears.

“It is still my heart,” he responds, eyes boring into hers, trying to make her see. But she  _ cannot _ see. She cannot understand. “The rebellion comes first –

“Then why?” she demands.

He scoffs. “I – why? Because!”

She is now mad. “That is  _ not _ even an excuse, Scott!”

Tessa watches as he stares into her eyes, something brewing behind his gaze trying to get out and reach out to her. But she can’t understand and it pains her, more than anything. It makes her dizzy and angry and  _ confused _ – because he’s looking at her and she sees the nights they’d spent in secret, far from the palace. She sees the proud smile he’d shoot her when she pinned him to the ground or caught him at the end of her blade. She sees him roll his eyes at council meetings and then flash her a fleeting smirk.

_ These bumbling fools _ , his eyes would say. And she would agree.

And then at midnight, she would turn these moments over and over in her head like puzzle pieces, trying to paint the bigger picture that she so clearly couldn’t see. She would remember her brothers getting scolded for painting outside the lines, the sound of a thin stick slicing through the air and landing swiftly on young skin would pierce the air of the study hall, and she would flinch at the sharp words of their art tutor. 

_ Look at young Tessa, she knows how to do as she’s told. She knows where the lines are.  _

Now she doesn’t. The lines are unclear. They are not straight and thick and prominent. They are fading and morphing, and she fears.

She hears him shift on the bed, eyes downcast, fingers playing with the ends of his blankets again. “I’m going on trial because of  _ me _ , that much is true. You cannot put the blame on yourself, princess. It was my conscious decision to put that badge on you.”

“Conscious, alright,” she murmurs under her breath.

He smirks at her. “ _ Partly _ conscious. But that is entirely my fault. My… training kicked in. I needed to protect you.” He exhales heavily. “Which would not have been required of me had you heeded my advice to stay in the palace that night.”

She keeps her silence. He sighs again.

“For someone who presents herself a harmless woman of high nobility, obedient and pliant to the whims of the Duke and the King and Queen, you sure are really good at being a shadow. Where are you most nights, Tessa?”

She grits her teeth. And what would he do if he knew? He still serves under the commands of the chief of guards, who is firmly under the commands of the King. Is he even truthfully serving under these titles or is he just doing his duties as a farce? She guesses he needed to keep the act up to please his commanders. How much of it is true?

Still, she shrugs. “The Queen wants to kill me. I am closer to the throne than she anticipated and she wants to get rid of me. I don’t see why she hadn’t done that when I was still little, but I guess she’s had a change of heart sometime in the last two decades.”

He stares at her with dark eyes, waiting.

She continues. “I wanted to convince a Gadbois spy to work for me and kill her before she kills  _ me _ .”

She hears Scott take in a sharp breath. “Why Gadbois? Why not all the other mercenaries out there?”

“Because Gadbois and I, you and I, we’re fighting the same fight. The Queen has the key to the power of the entire kingdom. Maybe information about the Unrest. She can stop Canton from swallowing peasant lands. If I become Queen…”

“You will do all that?” he asks, his voice small like a child’s. It holds a sort of awe in its tone and her resolve strengthens.

“If you trust me enough, I can provide information about anyone from high nobility,” she says. She is, after all, the Darling of the Kingdom. They trust her with secrets as she has no one to tell it to. Her fiancé makes sure of that. “I can help take them down.”

“And what of the Crown Prince?” Scott asks.

“What of him?”

He takes a couple of seconds to meet her eyes. “Your marriage to him… is it necessary?”

“Of course it is,” she replies. “Marrying Felix will ensure me the throne.”

He still has a storm brewing behind his eyes and she’s itching for it to boil over, but she lets him take his time. For all that he is capable of tearing a man apart with just his bare hands, he still fumbles with the words of his heart, Tessa can tell. Just as her heart still finds it hard to decipher him.  _ What a pair they make _ , she hastily thinks.

“And what of Fedor?”

She scoffs. “He died, didn’t he? He  _ was _ supposed to be my passage to the crown but seeing as I cannot marry a dead man, I would have to go with his older brother.”

He frowns. “You two were the topic of gossips for a long while, princess.”

Tessa laughs, the sound of it a complete surprise even to herself. She very well knows the rumors that spread through the kingdom the moment she pursued Fedor. The Queen was furious that such scandals about her son’s sexual activities were circulating all over the place. Tessa, on the other hand, was not bothered.  _ They are but rumors, my Queen _ , she would say. And they were. Fedor definitely did not have a small penis, nor that she would know how small it was.

“You like gossiping, don’t you, guard dog?” she says now, playful and light.

He scoffs. “There is no shame in indulging. The lives of Royals are full of scandal, it is enough to keep one entertained for an entire lifetime.” He swallows. “But was it true?”

She shakes her head, still thinking it hilarious that he concerns himself with such insignificant things. “Which of it, Scott, there were just too many to keep up with.”

This time, he laughs too, albeit quietly. “That is true. I’m sorry I asked.”

He seems resigned, Tessa notes. His shoulders have drooped as he tells her this. She settles on her chair a little more comfortably.

“The trial will provide an avenue for me to meet the Council,” he says again. “If I can justify my actions, I can enlighten the Council about your reasons. We can enlist their help. Tessa, you can change the kingdom.”

She bites her lip, but he takes her hand, lays a warm palm over the closed fist she has on the covers of his bed. “What if we fail?”

“We fail together,” he says, so strong it makes her want to weep with relief. He gives her a smile and she gives one of her own to him in return.

“And for whatever it’s worth, princess,” he whispers, looking straight into her eyes. “I will always protect you.”

*

She lies on her cot that and stares at the ceiling as the quietness slowly blankets over the whole of the infirmary. The kingdom will be looking for her soon, she would have to find a valid excuse for her prolonged absence. There is still the trial. There is still the matter of trust – of how easily Scott has given this to her despite her being of high nobility. 

Her mind reels and reels until her worries seep into her dreams.

*

Tessa sleepwalks, is what her mom and her brothers and her sister wouldalways tell her.  _ Young Tessa, lock your door. You do not want to be found in the dungeons when you walk in your slumber! _

She would wager her favorite stuffed animal that this is why she is in a cold hallway alone, bare feet on the frigid floor, in her night gown, and with no memory of how she got there.

Young Tessa shivers. She has never walked down these halls before, has never seen such bare walls. The palace always has whites or greens or reds on its majestic walls. These walls drip with water from the ceilings so high she could not see it. They reek with the smell of something rotten, like a dead mouse left to fester for weeks. 

(She hasn’t left the palace, has she? The gate guards would wake her, they would not let her get out on her own –)

It is dark, only lit by torches so far from each other that they only dot her vision and flicker in and out. Like grim stars, she notes. The farthest star must be the end of the hallway, and it must bleed into somewhere more familiar. This hope carries her to move.

She starts walking towards the light, her steps heavy with the tiredness in her bones. This is what happens every time she wakes from sleep walking. She must have walked a great deal away from her room. 

Her night gown is white and thin and almost see-through – she curses under her breath, although it is unbecoming of a lady to curse. She feels cold and hungry and scared, and it makes her feet move faster until –

The light at the end of the hallway flickers and disappears. 

She hears a whisper of a voice to her right – too close – so close –

Something rattles, a chain, to her left – and she couldn’t see because it’s too  _ dark _ , and her feet are frozen solid on the floor. But there is no wall to either side of her… there are cages.

_ Help!  _ She wants to scream, but her voice is stuck to her throat. Panic seizes her heart –  _ BANG –  _ something loud from where she came from.

She runs.

She hears them now, murmurs and footsteps. Her heart whispers to her,  _ this must be the dungeons, this must be the dungeons, this is where they keep the most horrid criminals _ . They must be looking at her, eyes wide and unblinking, and red. Their claws must be gripping their cages, itching to touch her skin if she gets too close to them. They must be hungry, they eat children, is what her brothers told her –

The end of the hallway is the darkest place she has ever seen. There is no light for her eyes to adjust to, no signs of a door to push through. Just a whisper of the draft that seems to be the spirit that haunts these halls. She hugs herself and shivers. 

_ Please, come help _ , she prays in her mind for she cannot speak. 

She turns around and tries to breathe. If she walks now, she can reach the other end in less than the time it took for her to reach this end. She just has to gather her strength and –

Something slithers behind her and Tessa freezes.

And then a short, quiet laugh.

The most blood-curdling laugh Tessa has ever heard. It does not sound human at all. It does not sound like a man’s or a woman’s. Just the scraping of the throat. It bubbles out of a mouth like how the muck of tar would boil. It is cold and humorless and it makes Tessa’s hair stand on end. 

_ “Are you… lost?” _ the voice says, and just like its laugh, it has nothing in it to be recognized. It speaks like it has never spoken before, words slow and rough. She smells the tobacco that her father always smokes, billowing around her, its scent strong and unpleasant. It must be a monster, she thinks. This is how she dies.

Tessa feels its breath hit the back of her neck.

_ “Do you… want to learn… a riddle?”  _ it says. It does not wait for her answer. Instead, there’s a whisper of chains dragging on the ground, footsteps heavy on muddy floors and then –

_ One, the key. It must be hidden from the eyes of those who seek. Revealed to the one who doesn’t. Buried, six feet under lies. _

_ Two, the skies. Two storms and then a day of peace. The field will glow gold. And then red. And the children will weep. _

_ Three, a crown. Be careful where it lands. _

Tessa turns, heart pounding painfully. Her eyes search for something in the dark, anything – a light – she finds eyes, crouched to her level, disturbingly human. 

_ “You are… a pretty thing… aren’t you?” _

There’s a puff of smoke that hits her face and then  _ nothing _ .


	2. for a good life (we just might have to weaken)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The elders left this out from the story: the mortal man was bound to die a horrible death by the gods that abhorred him, but the goddess wouldn’t let him. She took his pain and bled for him, and he felt every single one of it. The gods and goddesses were always believed to be immortal, indestructible. Nobody has ever seen one die, not yet. 
> 
> Scott is about to witness the murder of one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi!
> 
> oh gosh, first and foremost, i am sorry for the long wait. i struck a colossal writer's block along the way and it made writing hell. but hey, it's back and i'm back and hopefully the next one after this doesn't take as long. (let's see haha)
> 
> thank you for being patient with me. this project is ambitious and larger than anything i've ever done before but i'm determined to stick with it because i have tara to help me through, and i can't let her down.
> 
> this story is as much hers as it is mine.
> 
> as you have noticed, i changed the title of the fic and made it multi-chaptered, so. let's see how it goes. 
> 
> you will be seeing real life people's names in here, just know that i know nothing about these people but what is presented to us in the media. their designation as characters in this story is completely fictional (although we can all agree that eteri can go to hell.)
> 
> in this chapter, you will learn more about what the unrest really is, and how gadbois operates. some of the characters you meet in this one will become vital in the future. 
> 
> i would like to acknowledge my writer friends who are also suffering in this hellhole with me. yall lovely ladies are my lifeline!
> 
> with all that said, enjoy!
> 
> (title is from the tragically hip's song it's a good life if you don't weaken, the most emotional song i have ever heard)
> 
> trigger warning: violence, blood, and gore. mainly a torture scene that spans a couple of pages.

There’s a kind of tree in Ilderton that glows fire red in the summer. They had one in their backyard, Scott vividly remembers.

Something the elders would tell the children quite often when they sit together under its shade is the legend that surrounds the fire tree. The legend of its leaves, the reason they are red in the summer. There was a goddess who loved a mortal man so much that even if the other gods told her that it was forbidden, she would shake her head and defend her love. As a punishment, the gods made it so that whatever the man felt, the goddess would feel, and whatever the goddess felt, the man would, too.

And then they cut the goddess up in the heavens, one for every time she told them that she loved the man. The legend said that every drop of blood for every cut became the leaves of the fire tree.

The mortal man felt every single one of them.

The fire tree was beautiful.

Scott and his brothers would swing around it and try to paint pictures of it on their canvases. He had hidden Danny’s wooden sword in its trunk and had forgotten about it, and when they came back for it, it was gone. They thought it was magic. It was just so beautiful that when one of the first storms came and knocked it over with its intensity, Scott had mourned for it.

And then shortly after, the first Unrest came, and suddenly, there became more reasons to mourn than just the old fire tree.

It struck in the blink of an eye. All that Scott remembers whenever he tries to is that like the leaves of the fire tree, the sky turned scarlet, almost like blood was about to pour out of it. He and his brothers had looked over the fields like it was a marvel to behold – a quiet early sunset, as if it was a wonderful moment.

And then their mother barged into the room and told them to close the windows. They chirped choruses of confusion but their mother had just shaken her head and told them to go to their own rooms and to lock the doors and windows.

“Hide, be quiet. Do not let anyone in,” Alma had said and little Scott felt the fear in his mother’s voice. “Not even your father or me.”

Scott had stood in the middle of his room, panic settling into his bones as the sky turned a more sickening shade of red. Everything outside was red. The sunlight was red. He couldn’t see other colors, he had noted. There was only red. He hated red.

His mother had said to stay away from the windows, but his room was on the second floor of the house overlooking the fields of wheat. He had pressed a hand to the cool glass and looked at the chaos below.

There was so much noise from down there, screaming, yelling, cursing. He had never heard so much cursing – some of it, he could not discern the language.

There was Mister Fournier out there, one of the millers of the Moir mills. He had made Scott a wooden horse for his fourth birthday, it stood in his bedroom like a mighty beast. He was walking slowly towards someone else, a boy maybe only a little bit older than Charlie. Scott did not recognize the boy. Mister Fournier had a sickle in his hand.

He raised it above his head, and Scott could only flinch as it came down and sliced at the boy. Scott watched the blade bury into the boy’s shoulder with a gut-wrenching crack. Mister Fournier pulled it off and did it again and again and again, crying out something incoherent, until the boy was on the ground and the pool of dark liquid must be his blood, his arm flopping on the ground in a sick angle, his head turned sideways –

Mister Fournier froze, his sickle stuck in midair. He looked up. He looked straight into Scott’s eyes.

It was like watching everything unfold in front of his eyes – his life, his death, the murder in Mister Fournier’s eyes. He was so sure he was going to die right then, under the sickle of this mad man.

Scott had stumbled back onto the carpets and turned into stone, right there on the floor of his bedroom. He had wanted to cry, to scream, mom, please help! Mister Fournier wants to kill me!

He had shaken there for a long, long time – every creak in the old wood of his house sent his heart into galloping speeds. Every noise made him flinch. If his door knob rattled, it would be Mister Fournier with his sickle, ready to hack him to death like he did to the boy.

He didn’t understand, he had done nothing wrong. The miller was a good man, he had laughed with Scott and his brothers – oh God, his brothers!

He had cried, tears staining the floor around him where he had crumpled. He had never felt so helpless. What if his brothers were dead? What if his parents were dead? Everything was so loud, so loud, it felt like the air was pressing into Scott’s ears.

The red disappeared in a flash. He had to blink the tears away to realize this, and just like that, there was silence. The oppressive noise that threatened to deafen him had gone. It felt like the calm after the storm that uprooted their fire tree. When he stood, his knees buckled, felt unsteady on the ground.

He walked to his window and what he saw will haunt his dreams for as long as he lived.

Golden fields of wheat were now red with blood, pooling from bodies on the ground. They all stared at the sky, unmoving. Limbs were missing, like when Charlie pulled one of their cousin’s ragdolls and the head came off. Ragdolls, he had thought. That was what these people on the ground looked like. If he could focus on one, would he recognize them? Would one of them be one of the kids he had played with in the summers?

They were dead. Mister Fournier lay nearest their patio, eyes focused on the sky, and not breathing.

There was something else, some noise, a key to a lock, and suddenly, arms were around his tiny shaking form. But his ears rang and his eyes leaked steadily with tears. He could not hear his mother clearly, but he could hear himself, repeating mom over and over again in a small broken voice.

Nobody in his family was affected, and for that Scott will forever be grateful. But three days later, a maid brought young Patrick Chan to their house. He was still dirty, his sleeves and pants soaked with blood, and the maid had him in her embrace, a tiny scared animal clinging to its salvation.

He had hidden in a closet while his family was… he was the only one that survived, the maid had said. Chiddy sniffled and buried his face into the maid’s neck.

Scott knew Chiddy. He was always happy and eager to play for he was the only boy in his family. The Chans owned the neighboring fields, and whenever they invited the Moirs over, Chiddy’s much older sister would teach all of them how to dance. Chiddy loved dancing with his sister. And now she was gone.

It felt unfair. It felt that maybe this belonged in his nightmares, that he would somehow wake up and none of it had happened. He would tell his mom all about it because that made nightmares a lot better. When you could talk about it and laugh about it.

This felt like nothing anybody could talk about and laugh about. Not for a very long time.

*

The blood on the muddy ground doesn’t stand out much, but he watches it drip in slow motion, from his shoulder, down to the old wood, down to the ground. It pools there, mirrors the skies, makes the reflection a painting of the only childhood memory he wants to erase from his mind forever. He closes his eyes.

“Ten!”

He loses count.

There’s only the dull murmur of the audience surrounding the wet clearing, like the lashing of a man needs witnesses – he scoffs and it makes the Executioner pause.

His vision is blurry but he feels the shadow hover over his shaking form, blocking the stinging sun from the rawness of his back.

“Something funny, captain?”

Scott definitely knows that voice. He loathes that voice. He can imagine the owner of that voice raising a thin hand to the Executioner, halting his motions, giving Scott reprieve.

When he speaks to answer, his voice is hoarse and low and bile rises to his throat, bile that he swallows. “Nothing. Just –,” he coughs, spit and phlegm shoot out of his mouth, mix with the pooling blood under him – “I’m afraid you’re… too far from the action. Afraid to – to get blood on your – government-issued boots?”

Fuck. He’s started stuttering. He tries to breathe deeply but breathing pulls at the skin of his back and it sends fire from the top of his spine to the tips of his fingers.

Eteri growls. “I do not think you understand the gravity of your actions, captain,” she says. Her footsteps grow close, and Scott feels fingers yank painfully at his hair, pulling back until he is forced to look at the people surrounding their little show.

Eteri Tutberidze is a snake. She hisses and spits venom, and slinks around the government like the floors belong to her scales. She whispers into politicians’ ears the poison she wants to inject into the system and watches as it latches on. He sees her use in the Rebellion.

Scott’s eyes cannot focus on one face, but he knows most of them. A few he’s gone to training with, a few he’s talked with, a few he’s gone on missions with. He registers the conflict in their expressions – why is he being punished?

“Look at them, Scott,” Eteri says into his ear. “What would it mean for these people to question a great leader such as yourself? What would it mean for you to be doubted?”

Scott sniffs. “W-why don’t you ask your-yourself?”

She throws his head back down with so much force his forehead hits the wood in which he’s struggling to hold himself up with. The pain makes him dizzy, something cracks, and then his vision blacks out for a few seconds.

He fights with his consciousness for a few long seconds and then he hears it –

“Scott! No, get off me – I swear to God – ”

Chiddy’s voice pierces through the dangerous daze he’s found himself in, shakes him into alertness.

“Ah, good! The Surviving Chan!” Eteri says, addresses the crowd. “Just in time for the show.”

The show has already started, Scott thinks deliriously. He wants to let out a laugh but his mouth drips with blood and saliva, and he can’t really find it in himself. He wants to stand up, he wants to plant his fist into Eteri’s mouth and watch her splutter and bleed, but the Executioner has lashed his legs and he feels them bleeding through his pants.

He feels tiredness in his bones unlike anything he has ever felt before, the dirt where his knees are planted seeps into his pants, the cold of the previous rain making its way into his skin. He shivers with pain, with the thought of Tessa seeing him like this, demanding explanations he can’t give because he can’t – fucking – he can’t speak without wanting to throw up.

Eteri made sure to get a few punches in before handing him off to the Executioner – some brute whose only job is to kill people. Scott has never seen the point of getting a nameless, soulless man into the rebellion for the sole reason of spilling blood.

Scott lifts his head and sees Chiddy, two men on both sides of him, holding onto his arms, his eyes shining with unshed tears. He should be removed from here, he shouldn’t see his brother like this, all beaten up and weak and bloody. But he cannot speak, he can only open his mouth and try to whisper the word.

Go.

Chiddy shakes his head.

Eteri cackles. “Maybe we should put you on there next,” he tells Chiddy. And Scott knows her game, she’s trying to break what’s there to break. “You were an accomplice to the crime.”

“No,” Scott growls, and he doesn’t recognize his voice for a second.

“No?” Eteri asks, sinister grin looming over his vision.

He grits his teeth against the breath he takes, the cuts and wounds on his back stretching with his ribcage expanding. “No, you will not touch him – ”

“Eleven!” Eteri shouts –

The air crackles, the Executioner grunts, the pain slashes across his back and suddenly, his world goes white. He must have cried out loud. He must have cried. He feels tears sting the cuts on his cheeks. He feels bile rise to his mouth.

He spits, he doubles over, he coughs and prays to God that wherever the princess is, she stays there.

This is taking too long.

*

Thunder rumbles in the distance, bringing Scott back to the matter at hand.

He used to think council meetings were boring when his father would be heralded by the High Court to witness a hearing. He would bring young Scott, would tell him this would be something a grown up Scott would probably do. The halls always echoed and he always had to be sitting up straight. He couldn’t eat anything because it was rude, and he couldn’t laugh at the ridiculous make up on the faces of everyone on the other side of the huge tables. It felt like watching a play.

“Sorry, you were saying?” he says. They are all sitting around in a long desk and he’s standing in front of them. A mockery of the High Court, if he has ever seen one. He feels a few disapproving stares and a few disapproving heads shaking at his distasteful attitude. He can’t help but feel a little vindicated.

Especially at the flames behind Eteri’s eyes. Scott gets a special kind of vindication at her absolute disgust towards his whole existence.

There in the middle, Madame Tarasova purses her lips.

“Your sentence,” Eteri hisses between her teeth. And then, she adds, “Captain.”

She spits the title like a curse word, like snake spitting venom.

“Have I not proven it necessary and vital for the rebellion to keep the princess alive?” he tells them. “She is marrying into the crown, granting us access to the information we seek.”

“I see your point, Captain,” Herman, an old engineer from the North says. “But she is of nobility. What makes you believe she is even trustworthy?”

Another council member, an old man that looks older than anyone Scott has ever seen, strikes a palm on the desk. “And now, she knows where we camp!”

Herman raises an eyebrow. “You pinned your badge on a royal and you brought her to Gadbois territory – those are grounds for execution.”

Scott resists the urge to scoff. The rebellion is in dire need of people, and to kill one of the only people that have access to the palace is virtually suicide, and they all know it. There is a reason he was chosen to be in this position.

Madame Tarasova raises a wrinkled hand and the council hushes. She turns those hawk-like eyes to Scott, piercing in their old age and wisdom. “Your first order was to kill the princess,” she says. “And you failed that.”

“Madame,” he starts. She cuts him off.

“I understand,” she placates. “I have personally received the letter. I understood back then the evolution of the mission. I trusted your judgment as I have trusted you from the start. And now you do this?”

“Madame,” he says again. She cuts him off. He starts feeling a little bit like a petulant child.

“This girl must be truly special.”

Scott blinks. “The princess is not what everyone thinks she is.” He tries to ignore the feeling at the pit of his stomach and looks directly at Madame Tarasova. She has an expression he cannot read and it unsettles him. “She wants to help.”

Eteri scoffs. “And this is enough?”

“Her life is in danger from the Queen,” Scott says to her.

Something dangerous shifts in Eteri’s eyes as she looks around the room. She used to train Scott when he was a little boy, iron around her knuckles to strike anyone who dared disobey her rules. From the age fourteen, Scott had seen the image of brute and mad strength. She had always looked ready for blood, he would always think. She looked ready to kill.

In combat trainings, she was always the opponent to beat.

She still has the same look in her eyes right now.

“Do you not understand the gravity of your actions?” she says. “Should this trust betray us and the Royals find out where we camp? This would be all on you, Moir.”

“It will not,” Scott replies, resolute.

Herman stands up and looks to Madame Tarasova. “He must still answer to his crimes!”

“Saving a life hardly counts as a crime, Council Herman,” Scott says breezily. He could tell that Herman does not like his tone.

“We have laws,” Herman presses. “The princess, too! She is in Gadbois grounds.”

Silence envelops the room and Scott stands there, stunned. He loathes seeing the approving stares leveling him into the ground. But more than that, it is fear that grips his heart. His mind’s eye sees Tessa on the whipping pallet, her back bare for the Executioner to paint with red lashes. She would not be able to take it.

Eteri crosses her arms and sniffs. “Thirty lashes!” she says, and his vision flashes red.

“You will not touch her!” he bellows. Anger flares up in his chest so quickly, he doesn’t realize he’s taken a huge step towards the council until the guards by the walls draw their weapons. He takes his hand off the hilt of his sword and takes a step back, trying to breathe through his nose.

He revels in the look on Eteri’s face, a kind of fear that Scott knows comes from the knowledge that he can kill her before the guards can even move a muscle. He still aches from the injuries brought upon by the riot two days ago, and his ribs still feel like they had gone through the meat grinder, but he is not as incapable as before. He can kill her. He will.

“Not for the princess, captain,” Eteri sneers. Scott sees the fists balled up beside her, shaking with deeply concealed anger. “For you. Fifteen for the badge, the other half for the princess. She, on the other hand, will receive twenty for being on Forbidden Grounds.” She has the nerve to look apologetic. “That is just how it goes, captain.”

Scott tries to school his expression into something neutral, he tries to force his breathing to slow down. And with a calm voice, he says, “I will take it. Give me fifty.”

Eteri grins.

*

“Twenty-five to go, captain,” Eteri whispers to his ear, her breath rancid and reeking of hatred. “Can you still handle it?”

Scott’s head feels like it’s going to explode, the pain taking over every sense like an invading army. He feels the avalanche, unstoppable, in his veins – in his every muscle. There’s nothing else that he could feel but the pain in all its glory. He shakes with it, holds it close to his chest, close to the open wounds on his back, and inhales.

If he lets it go, he will go numb, and he cannot go numb. He has to stay awake – he has to fight the urge to pass out. If he closes his eyes, he will sleep.

Eteri helps him with this.

He turns his head and looks at her under heavy eyelids. “Get on with it, snake,” he sneers. Eteri bares her teeth and nods to the Executioner.

“Twenty-six!” she yells. The crowd flinches, Chiddy cries out. All these, he just hears as he squeezes his eyes shut to the almost-mechanical sound of the Executioner raising the whip and slicing it through the air. He lets out a pitiful whimper – there is no voice left in his throat to scream with, no more tears to let fall. Just blood on the ground, steadily leaking from his shoulders and his arms and his back.

Has anyone survived fifty? He wracks his brain for an answer. The most he has seen was when he was eighteen and still training to become a fighter. It was one of the newer recruits, the one with the fucked up back – Scott remembers his story, the reason why he chose to fight for Gadbois instead: he climbed the border wall from Canton where the barracks were cold and the beds were rocks and a cut up sack served as a blanket. He fell on his back, limped his way to a hidden camp, and begged for them to take him.

Two weeks later, he killed a younger recruit. He got thirty, but only endured twenty-one before he died on the pallet.

Why hasn’t he died yet?

“Twenty-seven!”

His throat starts closing and he can’t breathe – he can’t breathe –

His hands shake, he can’t open the fist he has wrapped around the edge of the pallet, and he can’t breathe –

He doesn’t know what happens next, but he finds himself rolling over, right to the edge of the pallet. His back hits the mud and he spares a thought to the infection he might get from the dirt seeping into his open wounds, but the sky is raining black dots and he feels so goddamn cold –

He hears Eteri, she says something. Something harsh, something about death, something about paying his dues. Something about the princess. It’s all messed up in his head, like a dream – or a nightmare. He hears footsteps thump against the walls of his skull, muted in his pain, but hurried. Is it Chiddy? Who comes for him? Will they let him die amongst the people he loved most?

He can’t see them but there’s a hand on his cheek and raindrops on his forehead. A shadow falls over his vision, a halo of the clear afternoon sun silhouetted against dark hair, and eyes so green they… they remind him of…

“Tessa?”

Her face becomes clearer in his vision, and she’s wearing a small shaky smile (for him, he realizes). It disappears when she lifts her head, replaced by something stone cold. She’s on the ground beside him, the standard Gadbois dress one of the kind healers gave her, the light brown of it now stained with the darker dirt.

His thoughts go to her dresses back home and how she doesn’t even try but she always, always looks like she ought to rule the whole world. She could. She probably should. She could rule in that godawful brown dress and still have the world at her feet –

“You will stop this right now, Eteri,” she says, voice steady and strong. She keeps her hand on his chest, the warmth the only relief he feels as his breathing slows down. She tells Chiddy to sit him up and to keep him up, and then she’s standing, letting the sunlight in again.

He cannot focus his eyes for a few moments until Chiddy’s at his back, keeping him up against his chest. Chiddy is shaking, or it could be him, but he is so careful with how he’s propping him up.

“Don’t you dare die on me now, brother,” Chiddy tells him so quietly, still struggling with his dead weight, voice broken and rough. “I’m still here. Didn’t we agree we’d die at the same time?”

Scott huffs a weak laugh.

Eteri breaks through the brittle silence that has enveloped the crowd. “Because what, your Majesty?” she says, the sound of her contempt booming through the open field. Everybody must be listening in at the spectacle. Everybody must be watching. Scott sits up more firmly on the ground, letting the throbbing of the pain keep him awake.

“I talked to Madame Tarasova,” she declares. Scott hears the quiver in her voice, so small, hidden behind the bravado. She has always been brave. Nothing ever fazes her, the Future Queen, not even the threat of death and he has always admired that from the moment they first met eyes.

“And somehow, this makes you an authority to Gadbois?” Eteri tells her. “The rebel faction that wants to kill your kind?”

“Why is she even here?” a voice from the crowd crows.

“She’s endangering us!” another one pipes in.

Scott’s breath catches in his throat the moment Tessa stands to her full height right at Eteri’s face. The vile woman stands her ground upon the princess’ cool gaze, jutting her chin out in defiance.

Surely, they must have faced each other in Court. Eteri frequents the North to submit the taxes she collected, and because of that, has gained a lot of Noble friends, friends that had unknowingly helped her obtain information useful for the rebellion. Is Tessa recalling all those times? Does she feel betrayed?

“Gadbois – this very rebellion – has a structure, your Majesty,” Eteri tells her, loud enough for everyone to hear. “We have laws, much like your own. Laws that, for the sake of everybody and their safety, we adhere strictly.”

Tessa stares her down, and then looks to the Executioner.

The Executioner stands still under her steady gaze – the grim image of Death, whip dripping with blood onto the soaked ground. There is something mystical about it, the image of the nameless Executioner as Death. How can nobody know Death? There are only two black eyes staring from under a bloodied sack over His head. Death is tall, taller than anyone in this crowd, and yet – nobody knows Death. Does Death feel guilt? Does He know how to feel guilt?

Death never speaks. He only strikes as men order Him to. How does one surrender His full agency to the whim of the powerful?

The princess looks back at Scott, her eyes dark and lovely, the painting of a war in grey battlefields. And then, she turns back to Eteri and says, “He will die if you continue.”

She bares her teeth, the snake showing her dominance with her most powerful weapon. She hisses, “If he must.”

The Executioner steps forward at Eteri’s behest and Tessa steps in front of him. The war wages on, the battlefield is beginning to darken. Scott wants to rip away from Chiddy’s steady grip, but his whole body is shaking from the pain of merely breathing.

“He mustn’t,” is Tessa’s reply, the steel in her voice rivaling the poison in Eteri’s. “The plan revolves around his security and proximity to the Royal Family.”

“What plan?” the snake grits through her teeth.

“The plan Madame Tarasova and I talked about,” she answers.

Scott sees it before he hears it, the shift on Eteri’s face as her expression turns into murder. He has seen it countless of times during sparring, when he was a kid. She loathed anything that is held above her head, anything that is done behind her back. He can see that she loathes this too, the supposed power that Tessa now holds.

He instantly forgets about the crowd, forgets about the snake, about Death staring at him. There is only Tessa.

Scott doesn’t know how she struck a deal with the Tarasova priestess, who holds the most power in all of Gadbois. He couldn’t figure it out, but somehow she did it. He fears – every sliver of it because of this deal. Whatever it is, it must come with a cost. She is of royal blood, her betrayal will bring about grave consequences, and Madame Tarasova is not one to make a deal that is not advantageous to her causes.

But somehow, Tessa did it.

Eteri seethes. “He still has to answer to his crimes.”

“Then I’ll take it, give me the rest of them,” she declares.

The elders left this out from the story: the mortal man was bound to die a horrible death by the gods that abhorred him, but the goddess wouldn’t let him. She took his pain and bled for him, and he felt every single one of it. The gods and goddesses were always believed to be immortal, indestructible. Nobody has ever seen one die, not yet.

Scott is about to witness the murder of one.

As if for one last fight, his legs gain strength. They fold on the ground, pushing until he’s on his knees, albeit shakily. He fights the urge to fall back down, the weight of the dizziness chaining him to where he is. He fights it.

Eteri steps forward, invading her personal space like the snake that she is. Her smile is diabolical –

“If you touch her, Eteri, I swear to God,” he rasps out, bones shaking inside him. His voice is not steady, but it is strong.

“Look at him, your Majesty,” Eteri says, her eyes trained on Scott. “Close to death and still fighting for your honor. Tell me…” she tilts her head at Tessa. “Did you fuck him?”

Her palm strikes across Eteri’s face with a swift smack and the crowd draws in a collective breath. It throws Eteri’s head to the side and it remains there, shocked, for seconds.

Tessa’s hand is shaking by her side but her face betrays nothing. Scott wants to apologize, but he is dumbfounded beyond belief. The echo of the slap rings in his head a dozen more times before he sees the Executioner take a step forward –

Scott’s hand shoots backward, grabbing at the hilt of the small dagger he knows Chiddy keeps by his belt. Its sharp unsheathing inaudible through the blood rushing in his ears. He just knows he has to protect her, God damn the pain, the weakness –

The princess turns her head, a mild fraction to the side to put him in her periphery and he freezes. Right there, standing in the middle of the clearing, a blade in his hand, ready to murder the snake, the Executioner, whoever threatens the life of the princess. She just has to say the word, give the sign.

It clicks.

He now knows Death. He knows what he looks like.

“Tessa,” he warns.

“Stand down, guard dog.”

Her voice is quiet, but it holds his heart so tightly he just might die. And then she turns to Eteri and asks, “How many left?”

The snake grins. “Twenty-three.”

His hand raises, levels with the princess’ neck. Scott watches as it pulls at the lace of the dress until it opens wide at the back, exposing her unblemished skin. Porcelain kept at the highest towers of the palace, to be protected. The very symbol of the nobility that the rebellion despises.

He can already see it, the red lashes on her back, the bleeding. Will she bleed blue like the royal that she is? Will she bleed red? Has she ever felt the pain of such beating? His stomach churns to the image of her on that pallet, knees on the dirty ground, waiting for the sick sound of the whip slashing through the air –

Eteri catches his gaze from over the princess’ shoulder, mockery and hunger in her eyes, and he doesn’t recognize the thudding footsteps as his own but his mind does click on the way he wrenches the snake’s hand with a tight grip.

Eteri twists in pain, away from the princess –

It happens fast.

Scott kicks his knee with brute force, possibly the last of his strength, the crunch of bone heard through the commotion. Eteri collapses on the ground screaming at the Executioner _, get him, get his throat_ from her pitiful position. Scott revels in the image – a reptile squirming in pain, weak and pathetic, its pristine government-issued uniform soaked through with rainwater and mud. And then Death turns its ugly head towards him.

Suddenly, exhaustion takes over his body like a flash flood. He takes one last look at Tessa before falling to his knees on the ground.

Is this what it feels like to be ready to die?

The Executioner raises his whip and Scott closes his eyes.

The whip makes its gut-wrenching sound.

It hits.

It doesn’t hurt.

There is no sun in his eyes, just a vague shadow.

There is only a mild warmth, a proximity to someone’s breath skimming the skin of his cheeks. When Scott opens his eyes, he meets those magnificent greens, only that in that moment, it is laden with tears and a pain he has acquainted with so well.

Did she make a sound?

No, but she collapses against his chest, wraps her arms around his neck, and sobs into his bare skin. The tears fall and he feels every single one of them. She shakes with it, or maybe it is him that is shaking. But his hands feel the fraying edges of the dress where it opens on her back. He is careful, but his vision still fogs up with emotion.

“Tessa,” he murmurs into her hair.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

His heart breaks into a million pieces.

Will the legends tell of them now, too?

There was once a goddess, she didn’t love the mortal man, but she valued him. She stood to take the killing blow for him. The mortal man became so angry that he stood up with the remainder of his strength, on shaking feet, with shaking hands, and he drove a dagger into Death’s neck. He heard the breaking of Death’s throat, the finality of the blood gurgling into the surface, he heard Death’s pathetic whimper.

The mortal man watched as Death’s figure crumpled to the ground, blood gushing from the open wound the dagger left when he pulled it out, without remorse. He watched Death’s hands grasp at nothing, grasping at His neck, red spilling from between His fingers, still clutching – maybe at hope that help would come, maybe at mercy, maybe at reparation. Death would bleed out, and the mortal man would revel in it.

The blood had pooled, licking at the man’s bare feet. He stared at his reflection on it and saw the same eyes he had seen in Death.

“Murderer!” the snake screamed.

“I am,” the mortal man replied, and the only thing in the way of his steps towards his next kill was the goddess’ hand around his.

Scott, once more, sits on the ground heavily. He is tired. His blood mixes with the blood of the Executioner. His ears ring with the murmurs of the people gathered to watch the fall of Death and his Master.

He should kill Eteri, too.

Someday, when there is no hand anymore to stop him.

But this, the hand that holds his, is in pain.

“Tessa,” he tries, fights through the scratchiness of his throat. He swallows a couple more times, the blood and the bile and the dirt. When she looks up at him, her eyes are red around the corners and chin wobbles. Still, she touches the side of his face with such reverence that he feels his resolve cave in.

“I’m sorry,” he says, hands hovering over her raw skin. “Does it hurt?”

She bows her head and tears fall onto her ruined skirts; he longs to wipe her tears but his hands are dirty and battered.

“Yes,” he hears her reply. Her other hand reaches for him, for his face, thumbs skimming the rough skin of his cheekbones. He must still be bruised there because it hurt but he doesn’t dare flinch.

Her hands shake against his cheeks and the only way to steady her would be to take her hands in his, tell her it’s going to be alright. Nothing is her fault. She should be proud of herself for the deal – but he gets to tell her none of those when his vision suddenly clouds over, when he feels all of his muscles seize. He tries to blink the feeling away but when he opens his eyes, he couldn’t see anything, couldn’t say anything.

He meets the ground hard and then nothing.

*

The goddess comes to him in a dream.

He knows it is a dream because he is sitting under the shade of the fire tree in their old farm and he feels no pain. Just the breeze skittering against his skin, and the warmth of the morning sun. The breeze makes the goddess’ white robes flutter around her like a midday cloud.

Her smile is serene as she stands there, immaculate porcelain kept in the highest towers to be protected.

The goddess wants to tell him a story, and he wants to laugh. “You are one,” he tells her.

She tilts her head of dark hair, tendrils of them falling against her forehead and her ears. He can tell that she is set to ignore his attitude. “Often, stories mean more than what they first sound like.”

A raven lands on the goddess’ outstretched arm. The bird is the goddess’ spirit, the legends always say. Ravens guide the believers and guard them against adversaries.

This bird, this one on her arm, is an old one. Its feathers are ruffled beyond salvation, its dark beak crooked and dented, its talons look bruised and battered, and its eyes are covered with a greyish film.

Its name is Magnus. Scott just knows it.

“Magnus used to live in your tree,” the goddess tells him, eyes trained on the raven. “He was old and wise and would frequently tell me about the things you did when you were a child.”

She regards him with a small smile. “You were very dear to Magnus,” she continues.

“He died during the first storm,” Scott says.

“Indeed,” the goddess replies. “But Magnus was smart. Smarter than the other ravens in my care.”

“Someone killed him,” he replies. Her riddles come in statements and it makes the dream seem even more of a dream.

When she looks at him, she is smiling. Her eyes are green, the color of the forest in spring. He remembers walking along ridges when he was a kid, and closing his eyes and seeing just that shade of green instead of the dark that usually comes.

She looks at the raven again, her finger stroking its feathers reverently. “Ravens see what it is that is about to come. They hear earthquakes from distances incomprehensible. They feel the winds of tornadoes before they are even formed.”

“Is this your story?”

She shakes her head and lets Magnus fly away. “There was once a mortal man that loved a goddess,” she says. “The man loved her in his childhood with bright eyes and a heart of gold. And in his walk towards becoming a man, he loved her with each war cry in the battlefield. He prayed to her in death, and praised her when he evaded it.

“One day, the man finally met her.”

Scott waits for the story to end but the goddess seems adamant in her halt. When he is sure that there is no more there but silence, he scoffs.

“That’s it? Your story isn’t much of a story,” he tells her.

“It says all it needs to say,” the goddess replies.

Scott bows his head and sighs. “Your riddles are tiresome.”

He hears the grass crunch under her feet, and then near him, and then beside him. She sits. The goddess sits beside him and lets out a soft breath.

He imagines goddesses do not sit on the dirt like this, they must have thrones where they live. There must be cushions where they sit, not cold hard dirt.

“Scott,” she says and he shakes his head.

“Don’t say my name like that.”

“Why?”

He blinks as his heart thunders in his chest like a galloping horse. “You sound like her.”

“Like who?”

He cannot take this. His heart and his head are playing tricks on him. The goddess and… and her, they’re both the most infuriating riddles he has ever known. And he doesn’t even like riddles, but here he is, trying to figure her out every single day. How does she do the things she does? How can she be so beautiful and annoying at the same time? How can she believe in him and forgive him when all he does is drag her into messes?

“Never mind,” he finally says. “Wake me up.”

“You know,” the goddess says, and there isn’t a hint of surprise in her tone.

“Yes, wake me up. I have a rebellion to run.”

The goddess shakes her head and looks away into the horizon. There, far but slowly creeping, is a storm. Scott sees the darkness it drags with it, the flashes of lightning ominously illuminating its path.

“You must be tired,” the goddess tells him. “Don’t you want to rest for a while?”

He doesn’t want to think about it, doesn’t want to count the genuinely restful sleep he has gotten ever since the first Unrest. When he looks at the goddess, she is looking back at him with pity in her eyes. He hates it.

“I stopped believing in you after that,” he says. “I never prayed again. You never came down, you never consoled the grieving. Patrick lost his whole family and you were not there. He still believes in you until now. He’s a fool for it.”

“Faith is the ground upon which the strong stands,” says the goddess.

Scott laughs, the humor absent. “I have none of that.”

“Maybe not in the way you think it should be.” The goddess begins to disappear right before his very eyes, her robes turning into ash right there on the ground. Suddenly, Scott feels dread weigh his stomach down. “You love, Scott. There is so much of that in your heart. You hurt because of it, you give part of yourself for it, and you will die for it.

“The rebellion has changed for you. The sooner you realize this, the better.”

“I don’t understand,” he says. He must be pleading, his hands want to hold her and keep her here, make her answer all her riddles. There are so many of them – the answers bringing up more confusion than clarity.

He knows this in his heart, somewhere in there. There was a shift, he felt it, but he couldn’t find it. It must be a gear clicking into place, or puzzle pieces coming together. He just needs to find the light.

The goddess shakes her head and smiles.

Scott reaches out a hand, brushing against the goddess’ disintegrating white dress. “Do you have a name?” he asks, desperately. He is aware of the pain in his chest and the tears in his eyes, but this is a dream and he is looking at the only reprieve he will ever get. “They never give you a name that means anything.”

“I am who you want me to be,” she says and then disappears.

A tear escapes his careful expression. “Tessa.”

*

He has more dreams after that but they seem distant, now that he’s staring at the dying fireplace of the infirmary. He’s been awake for a good couple of minutes now but he hasn’t moved yet, hasn’t sought anyone yet.

Everything feels sore, out of place, like he broke his bones into a million pieces and the shards are all running around in his bloodstream. He’s on his stomach and the unbearable stinging on his back must be why. He hears the crack of the whip in his head and he flinches.

There is no noise, nothing but the crackling of the fire, nothing to feel but the tiredness in his bones, and for the first time in a long while, he feels alone.

There are no windows this part of the infirmary, nothing to tell him what time of the day it is, but for some reason, his mind is stuck in the dark of the night.

“You were out for three days,” a soft voice to his far right says.

She sounds tired, burdened, and he wants to see her. The desire catches him off-guard, almost as well as when he hears her footsteps round his bed and she sits at the stool beside his head.

Seeing her is like a cold draft from the sea washing over his body, a relief to the all-consuming fire on his back. She doesn’t smile but she bites her lip, uncertain and hesitant unlike she has ever been around him. The Tessa that he knows is sure and strong and hardheaded.

And the Scott that he knows doesn’t care much about anything other than the rebellion, but here he is, feeling the remnants of the dream where he is in love with a goddess that he cannot touch. His mind paints the princess in white robes with a raven on her shoulder, eyes greener than the forest, boring into his own. The painting burns into his brain like a scar.

“Princess,” he says, and it comes out more air than voice.

“Guard dog,” she replies, an attempt at the usual vitriol that followed the title. She couldn’t muster it up, but her eyes shine with something like relief. “How do you feel?”

He tries to smile but only manages a grimace. “Like I have been in the meat grinder. Your back?”

It is then that he notices that she’s wearing a loose frock without a corset. She must have been treated, he hopes.

“Faring well,” she says, eyes shifting to his back. “Better than yours.”

“I would hope so,” he says, and even taking in a breath hurts. She narrows her eyes at him, carefully guarded well of emotions hidden behind that piercing gaze.

After waking up from the Dream, he finds himself trying to piece the puzzle of a bigger picture together. There is an odd calmness in his head, or maybe it is the medicine, but there is a fog around his thoughts that her voice cuts through cleanly. The fog makes the pain dull, but it is present nonetheless, along with the profound feeling of loss – of something he never had in the first place. The Dream dangled his heart in front of him and then ripped it away.

If he dares look at Tessa, he would see guilt in her eyes. But he mustn’t, he owes her that. Instead, he listens to her and tries not to give away just how much pain he is in.

She takes a breath and looks away. “I know what happened,” she tells him. “Madame Tarasova told me.”

Scott keeps silent. He has learned in the past year that it is best to let her come out with her own words.

“You should not have done that,” she continues, every word pressed with guilt and anger. “You could have died.”

“You could have died,” Scott shoots back. “I don’t think you realize how important you are.” To the rebellion, he should say. To me, he shouldn’t. He does neither, but instead gauges her reaction.

Her brows furrow and she meets his gaze, determined. “And you’re not?”

“Anyone could do my job,” he tells her. “Anyone can guide you to power, but there’s only one you.”

They look at each other for a long moment, his argument dangling in the air between them. And a million more words that stay voiceless. He thinks she wants to argue more, as she seems to have been born to do, but she just sits back and exhales. The weight on her shoulders seems to have lifted and her fight dissipates into a calmness that is both a relief and a puzzle.

She is still as straight-backed, her posture the product of years of training, but she seems relaxed.

“We’re not done,” she promises and he can’t help but smile. There she is. “I do not want to aggravate the injured more than he already is.”

Scott lets out a quiet laugh. “Thank you.”

“I’m glad you’re not dead.”

“Me too.”

She grabs the bowl by the table and sits closer to his bed, her hair loose and flowing down her shoulders. They brush his arm, the smell of fresh fruit and soap invading his senses, making him dizzy. When she wets a towel and holds it up, he nods and gives her a smile.

He feels his back tingling with the cold of the water as his ears ring with her proximity. He wants to fill the silence, make her laugh or annoy her, anything to appease the ringing in his ears but then she’s speaking, all quiet and shaking. This close to him, she overwhelms the pain.

“You scared us,” she says as she cleans his wounds. “Your heart actually stopped beating twice. They said it was shock. You,” she wipes the sopping wet towel onto his face and he yelps. “You better not do that again.”

“My job is very dangerous, princess.”

“Be better at it.”

He is offended. “I am the best at it, your Majesty, or have you forgotten?”

She rolls her eyes and it puzzles him just how she could make such a gesture so beautiful. “I have not. I just… wish it was a little easier.”

He lifts his hand and grabs at the one she has on his shoulder, the need to touch her a sudden urge that is too insistent to ignore. “We’re at war, Tessa,” he says. “It will never be easy. But you are our best bet at winning it, so if it takes all of me to protect you, I will give it. You can argue all you want and I’m still going to do my job.”

She sighs and hangs her head, a small smile playing along her lips. He likes that smile.

“Thank you,” she says, and when she leans over to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth, his world stops.

He feels it sear into his skin like a brand, the warmth of her shooting straight into the center of his chest like a punch. But most of all, he feels her linger.

A second turns into an eternity between the breath she takes and the breath she sighs, and when she pulls away, he sees the darkness in her eyes linger. The green of her eyes, he thinks, look like candlelight in the middle of a dim room.

His fingers flex against her skin as he recognizes the look in them. Want, he thinks. He wishes.

She hasn’t moved, hasn’t pulled all the way away from him, but she hasn’t looked like she has breathed, too, and he smiles. It appeases her, makes her smile back and lean her forehead against his.

There are no words when she closes her eyes and shares his breath, no words when she puts her palm on the side of his face, thumb caressing his ear lightly.

When he speaks, he whispers. “What are we doing?”

She bites her lip and this close, he wants to kiss her. He wants to bite her lip and make her moan, he wants to forget the pain and make her feel good – but there is only him and his duties and a hard line. He knows well enough what will happen should they cross that line. So, in her silence, he asks again.

“Princess, what are we doing?”

She shakes her head and opens her eyes and just like that, he would throw the mission to hell if she tells him to. But she sighs and says, “Nothing.”

He licks his dry lips and deflates.

“We are doing nothing,” she continues. “You and I are doing… nothing.”

And Scott accepts this – he accepts nothing. Nothing is the feeling of warmth as she stays in his orbit, or the crackling of the fireplace that is keeping him grounded in the moment. Nothing is her eyes, the black voids of them threatening to swallow the green. Nothing is his heart pounding against the old mattress beneath him. There is nothing more in this world that he wants to be doing with her than nothing.

She taps his cheek once and smiles, the fireplace illuminating the angles of her face, and he nods. He wants to say something, say more things to make her stay but she must be tired. She must be watching him all this time, she deserves her rest.

“Are you leaving?” he asks, still. He loathes the longing in his voice, but it lives in his heart now, there is no containing it.

She bites her lip to keep her smile but he sees it all the same. “I will not be far,” she says. “In fact, I will be right by your side.”

He takes that to heart, to his stupid little heart.

*

The days pass by in a blur in this windowless room of his, the fireplace constantly crackling to keep him warm, the basin of clean water by his side always filled to the brim to keep his wounds clean.

There are no mirrors in this windowless room of his to see if his back is as horrifying as Jean-Luc had described to him one evening. Tessa had tried shooing him away even as Scott explained his nature as a healer.

“It doesn’t look as bad as he says it is,” she tells them. She is wearing disdain and suspicion in her eyes.

Jean-Luc frowns. “Your Majesty, I mean no disrespect, but,” he spares a glance at Scott’s inquisitive eyebrows. “He looks like shit.”

The boy stays in his seat, looking at Scott’s back like he is reading ancient text.

For all that he is a talented young healer, Jean-Luc can be a little… blunt. His mother and grandmother come from a long line of touch-healers, healers who have aided the rebellion ever since its conception. Scott is thankful, but he is a little wary.

There is no fear in him, he would like to believe. He’s been to many battles, has done much gruesomeness with his bare hands, with weapons. Fear makes the blade dull, he would always think. There is no fear in him right now as Jean-Luc assesses his skin with careful eyes.

“I think you ought to give a professional diagnostic, Mr. Baker,” Tessa says as she stands next to the fireplace. She is visibly tense and exhausted, and she needs some food in her if her snappish behavior is any indication.

Jean-Luc huffs and hangs his head. Scott gives his irritable princess a smile. “Let the kid breathe, Tess. He and I go way back.”

“She’s right, captain,” Jean-Luc tells them both. “I know one thing is for certain. You will have a lot of scarring, and a lot of pain. Marie recommends this ointment from the palace…” he glances at Tessa, a smidgen of fear in his eyes.

The princess must know this by now. The moles in the palace steal from inventories to sustain the rebellion, it’s one of the graver dangers of Marie-France and Patrice’s jobs. They could get caught and it’s straight to the hanging tree for them.

“Fear nothing, Mr. Baker. I am aware now of the presence of your forces inside the palace walls.”

The princess stands there, immaculate in her Gadbois-standard clothes and her hair in a soft bun, and Scott marvels at her strength.

Jean-Luc sighs and smiles at the princess for the first time. “You are too formal, you can just call me Jean-Luc.”

The boy spreads a careful hand on top of Scott’s skin and hums, the contact never reaching his senses, and for a moment he stills. It might be the burden of too many scars, he thinks. He couldn’t feel anything, but – it’s still too early to tell. He is still hurting and he is in agony every night as the cold seeps through his open wounds so – he still feels something. He felt Tessa’s breath on his skin last night, he felt her fingertips.

He couldn’t feel Jean-Luc’s touch, not this time.

Jean-Luc sighs and drops his hand. “It’s still too early to tell,” he says, voicing out Scott’s thoughts. “We will have to wait for your skin to fully heal to know if any damage has been done. My hopes to nothing really bad, captain.”

Scott gives him a smile. “You and me both.”

*

The sky rains fire and arrows two weeks after.

Scott awakes from heavy footsteps from upstairs and the rancid smell of burning flesh and suddenly, there, behind his eyelids, he sees the red sky of the first Unrest and he – he is small again, staring into the distance, helpless. The birds screech maniacally overhead, beaks sharp and talons even sharper, swooping down to scoop the eyelids of those who dare look up and –

“Captain, we have to go!”

He shoots up from his bed, just quick enough to see Jean-Luc’s mother disappearing into the hallway. The boy stands in place with wide eyes, hands shaking against the door handle.

“We’re – we’re under attack,” he murmurs and promptly closes the door behind him, latches the bolt shut for good measure.

“Report, healer,” Scott says, reaching for the shirt near his pillow. The wounds sting as he put it on and there are a million questions to be asked, but his mind throbs with nothing but one name. Tessa.

(He hears the hooves from above, the shouts, the yelling, the screaming. He wills his heart to calm.)

“Military guards, captain,” he says as he collects vials and bottles in a bag. His hands shake as he reads from the labels. “They have flaming arrows and horses. They must – they must have gotten the location of the camp from one of us, or-or they spied. The children were all evacuated first, and then the elders and the injured. You need to get out of here.”

“Where’s Tessa?”

Jean-Luc seizes from his task and gapes at him. “I – she –

“Where is she, healer?”

The boy startles at his strong tone, glass tinkling delicately in the cloth bag that he is holding. “Last I heard, she… she joined Chiddy and the others in securing the walls.”

Foolish. Brave.

“Fucking stupid,” Scott says under his breath as he stands and gathers his sword from beside his bed.

The ground shakes with the weight it takes from running feet, and he finds himself dizzy and weak and – God damn it, panic starts settling in his palms like cold metal.

“Which wall?” he asks the young healer. His hands shake as he puts the sword around his waist, but he secures it with familiarity.

“Northwest,” Jean-Luc answers, stands next to him as he braces himself with a deep breath. “Captain, you are still not healed fully. I must evacuate you with the injured.”

He fixes the healer with a hard stare. “You get yourself to the Southern forest with the others, I have to find Sam and the princess.”

“S-Sam? Sam Chouinard?”

Scott nods. “The Badger.”

*

This Gadbois camp sits in a valley down South from the mainland, at the entrance of a deep dark forest that runs until it reaches the sea some three hours by walking. It is an established escape route for when the camp needed to evacuate (children, elders, injured, then we fight, the captain before Scott had always said. We fight.)

When Scott emerges from the basement of the infirmary, the main floor is deserted. Beds are stripped to the mattress, cribs empty, windows shut. The cabinets had been emptied as well, empty and broken medicine bottles litter the floor, and it would be quiet if it were just that room. The healers must also be in the battlefield or guiding the evacuees.

He opens the door to the main grounds and stays close to the edges.

There are no more rebels on the walls, just streaks of blood and limp bodies hanging on wooden poles dead. The rebels on the ground are in combat – blades and limbs flying everywhere. His instincts tell him to defend the evacuees, and kill as many guards, but his heart beats only to the footsteps guiding him towards the northwest wall.

He must find Tessa. But first –

A boy, perhaps only thirteen, is caught in a stalemate with a guard much larger than he is, the guard’s sword grinding against the boy’s wooden bow with a sickly screech. It was easy, with the guard’s full attention on the poor child, to slash at his back and then slit his throat right there. Blood sprays at the child’s innocent face as the guard falls back, eyes trained to the sky, dead.

“I need you to do me a favor,” he tells the boy, takes his bow and arrows in exchange for a small dagger from his belt, and then presses a piece parchment in his palm. “Get this to Lieutenant Moir of the Second Noble Battalion and then show him your badge.”

“I-in the palace?” the boy stutters, gripping the dagger Scott gave him.

“Yes,” he replies. “Can you do that for me? Run as fast as you can out from the battlefield and into the gates of the palace. Deliver the message.”

“Captain, I don’t know, I never –

Scott grasps the kid’s shoulders and looks him in the eye. He sees there what he saw in the mirrors of his old house after the first Unrest and then years and years later, eyes of the haunted, of the scared. “His name is Danny, he’ll take care of you there.” He gives the kid a little shake. “Stay alive.”

The boy nods, and then sprints away.

He, on the other hand, sets out to look for Tessa.

Finding a princess in a battlefield is not hard, Scott discovers. She holds herself like she would in a fencing lesson, minus the grace and the shroud of falsity. The ground she walks on does not glow with every step, but her blade slashes across the air like it weighs nothing, and the bleak, cloudless, grey sky becomes her backdrop as the chaos makes way for her. She wears her hair in a bun, her face covered with a scarf, and her blade bloodied.

She is the goddess that brings hurricanes into the lands.

She is ethereal.

She is positively killing him.

“Princess!” he hisses as he catches up to her side, catching her elbow in a vice grip. She whips her head around to glare at him as he backs her into a dim storage shed, away from the fighting.

“What are you – shouldn’t you be with the evacuees?” she asks, ripping the scarf away from her face. She is flushed with adrenaline, cheeks red and dirty, and she is so beautiful it threatens Scott’s resolve. But then –

“You are such a pain in the ass,” he sneers right into her space. Her eyes flash a sudden shade of anger, but he gears on. “You are going to get yourself killed, your Majesty –

“Chiddy needed help with the northwest wall, I can take care of myself –

Scott growls. “That is not the point, Tessa.”

He feels wood in his palm crumbling into splinters as he grips into the spaces of the panels to cage this infuriating woman in. Her name is heavy on his tongue with terrible worry that his heart is just learning to feel.

He sighs. “We have to get out of here.”

They stay close to the walls, footsteps quick and sure as they head toward the south gate where most of the evacuees were escaping. It starts raining halfway through camp, turning dust into mud under their soles. He takes her hand and runs faster through the blades and arrows.

“You’re bleeding,” he hears her say as they duck under a toolshed.

“Don’t worry about it,” he replies, checking the other side for guards. There is one locked in hand-to-hand with a rebel, and there is one on the ground with his back to the wall, just beside the gate. He looks dead, but Scott knows better.

“Stay behind me,” he murmurs as he sticks an arrow into the bow and pulls. He can hear her protest behind him, but his focus is solely on the man near the gate.

He holds the bow the way he held his first one six years ago. Fourteen years old with a trail of ghosts at his tail, a chip the size of a boulder on his shoulder, and all alone. There had only been one desire in his heart when he lined up amongst all the other kids who volunteered for the rebellion. He wanted to prove himself.

Scott has never missed a target in his life, not even with one blind eye.

So, he stills.

Inhale, pull. Exhale.

Release.

The arrow slices through the air and into the gate-guard’s temple, his limp body tipping over to the side. Another hits the last guard in the back, toppling him over.

Scott wastes no time and grabs the princess’ hand to pull her towards the exit.

The path leading into the dark forest is laden with massive tree roots and stones, chosen to make the trek difficult. There are fighters in the trees ready to take out guards who escape the camp, and traps set onto the ground. It is humid and dark, the thick canopy overhead creating a shade so devoid of light that there are fireflies even in the middle of the day.

They walk briskly until the path gives way to a tamer trek, and then Scott halts.

“Twenty-three trees on your right, eighteen on your left and – see that space between those two trees?” he looks back to her to see if she’s listening.

Sweat rolls down the side of her face as she nods, breathing heavy and hard. He can tell that she’s tired and he is, too. The wounds on his back have reopened in the middle of the path, he feels them bleeding through his shirt, and he imagines it doesn’t look good. But he must carry on if they want to keep their cover.

“That’s where the Badger lives,” he continues.

“What?”

He gives her a smile. “The rebellion has a secret weapon against the Nobility, your Majesty. And he does not know how to shoot arrows, nor wield swords.” He resumes the walk, this time slower and much more careful. He motions for her to do the same. “The palace has a lot of bright minds in their midst; engineers, architects, doctors, and scientists. But they all don’t hold a candle to what the Badger has in his head.”

“The Badger?” she asks, and then promptly trips on a root. He catches her by the arms and grips tight, the beginning of a smile tugging at both of their lips.

“Yes,” he manages to say with their proximity. “You’ll see.”

*

The hut is small.

The size of what a dog would live in.

He watches Tessa’s eyebrows disappear into her hairline as she stares at the hut.

“This is a real badger? It wasn’t in jest?”

He laughs. “I can’t wait for you to meet him.”

Under the hut is a deep hole, perhaps the width of one and a half person. It leads into a tunnel underground lit only by lamps every eight steps so that there are paces of dark and light flickering sporadically. The ceiling lies low, almost touching the top of Scott’s head, and the space between the walls is only enough for a single file. The smell of earth is strong, almost acidic to the nose.

When Scott speaks, his voice echoes. “We’re safe here, princess.”

“I’m not worried about that,” she tells him as she follows his steps. “I’m more worried about the way to the palace. Do you have a map?”

He smirks back at her. “No, I do not.”

“I do.”

 Tessa’s first instinct is to reach for the dagger at her belt, but Scott remains calm. The stranger’s voice comes from the shadows, almost like it comes from nowhere. Footsteps sound, and a man emerges in front of them.

Sam Chouinard stands just the right height of the tunnel, his Gadbois badge sitting on his right breast so proudly that it might just be a beacon calling out for enemies.

Scott smiles in relief. “Sam, it has been so long.”

“Scotty,” he envelopes the rebel captain in a hug. “You never visit anymore. And you – you must be the princess of the capitol. My name is Sam Chouinard, it is nice to finally meet you, mademoiselle.”

He walks up towards the princess and kisses the back of her hand, all charming and innocent.

“Pleasure is all mine, monsieur,” Tessa replies, reluctant still.

Sam gives her a nod and then walks briskly ahead. “Come, we waste no time. It is near sunset.”

Scott feels it more than hears it, the questions in the princess’ mind. The tunnels are intricate, with forks for every ten minutes that they walk, and the farther they travel, the tighter her hand grips his. It is perhaps not fear but anxiety, Scott figures. The princess does not give her trust easily, and for a strange and weird presence to be leading them towards the unknown underground, it must be jarring her.

By what is possibly the thirteenth fork, she pauses. “How do you know all of this?”

Scott saves Sam from answering, tugging Tessa along with a squeeze of the hand that tells her to trust him. “Sam built this himself. The tunnels, the walls, all him. When I told you that the rebellion has a secret weapon, I didn’t mean something that destroys. I was talking about a builder.” He looks back at her and gives her a reassuring smile. “He is the smartest person alive, I’d wager.”

“Do not flatter me, captain Moir,” Sam replies with chuckle. “I am merely a great memorizer.”

Scott shakes his head. “Memorizer, architect, engineer. A little bit of a scientist, and a little bit of a doctor,” he tells Tessa. “He knows this kingdom like the back of his hand. Some of these paths lead to dead ends, some of them lead to different parts of the city, the outskirts, the slums. He downplays himself, but he really is the blood of this rebellion.”

“Scotty, you talk too much about me,” Sam interjects as he rounds another corner. “Talk about your lady, what is she going to do once we get to the palace?”

“She’s going to save us all,” he replies because that is the gist of it. She is going to be the face of this rebellion and risk her life for the people. And he is going to make sure that she stays alive through all of this.

Sam pauses in his tracks, his back still turned to them, and says, “You are putting a lot of faith in her.” And then he faces them, half of his face hidden in the shadows that it is impossible to gauge his expression. “No offense, princess. But you are nobility.”

Tessa takes a deep breath and shakes her head. “I understand.”

Sam turns away again with small smile and walks on. “You are brave, I can give you that. Did you know that the whole camp blames you for the ambush?”

“Sam,” Scott warns.

“It is true, captain,” he says. “And I believe there is a plan, but the people of Gadbois don’t know it. Not yet, at least. All they know is that you’re helping a Noble into the camp.”

“She did not bring the guards into camp,” Scott presses. “She has nothing to do with –

A hand touches his arm and he halts.

Scott wants to say more, but he sees the futility of his defense. And by god, she is the most stubborn person he has ever met, even more stubborn than himself. Nothing can stand in the way of the princess, not if they want to be destroyed.

“I don’t need you to defend my honor, guard dog,” she tells him, her voice strong and sure, and then to Sam: “I earned your captain’s trust, I shall earn the rebellion’s on my own terms. And they will. I assure you that. I only think about nothing but the fate of my people.”

Sam gives them both a smile. “For your sake and for everybody’s, I truly hope so.” He knocks the ceiling above him with a stick. “We have arrived. I wish you both good luck.”

*

They get their story straight:

The rebels kidnapped them during the night, held them in their grounds for more than a month in poor conditions. They escaped during the assault, ran through the forest and found their way to the palace, and when they arrived at the gates, Lieutenant Danny Moir welcomed them with warm embraces.

When the truth is much colder than that:

Danny looks them both in the eyes, grave and heavy. He clutches a red badge in his hand, the Gadbois badge, and he shakes with terror.

“Felix has been looking for you,” he tells them both. “He knows about the palace rebels, he ordered the attack on the camp. Your Majesty, he is not happy and we are _all_ in danger.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you made it to the end! congrats!
> 
> if you liked it, leave me a kudos and/or a comment. if you didn't, tell me in the comments as well! i love hearing from you guys. fantasy aus are more fun with discussion!
> 
> if yall are on twitter, you can follow me there and talk to me about this fic or the others or just about anything. (@hooksandheroics)
> 
> love you guys!

**Author's Note:**

> i know what you're thinking. what is the unrest? who is the queen? wtf is this
> 
> all (some) will be answered soon
> 
> lemme know what you think! leave comments, maybe yell at me, or drop me a silent kudos. i love them all. if you wanna smack me upside the head, find me @hooksandheroics on twitter. yall. peace!


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